Arugal

During the Burning Legion's invasion a few months ago, Aiden and Onyxia, the Black Dragon Princess, had gone to Blackrock Mountain to warn Nefarian, the Black Dragon Prince, telling him to lead the Blackrock orcs and black dragons to evacuate in advance, so as not to fall into the hands of the Burning Legion and increase the enemy's strength.

Later, Nefarian fled all the way to Stranglethorn Vale, and he and his subordinates took the expensive ship of the goblin tycoon in Booty Bay to Twilight Highlands by sea, in order to avoid the Burning Legion.

The reputation of goblin profiteers resounded throughout Azeroth, not to mention that behind Booty Bay was the notorious Blackwater Raiders? The black-hearted tycoon, Rivigaz, asked for an exorbitant price, and Nefarian paid half of his property to agree to let the other party set sail.

However, Nefarian was never one to swallow his anger. As soon as he arrived at his destination and contacted the Twilight's Hammer members here, he immediately turned his back and led his subordinates to attack these greedy goblins.

Twilight Highlands is a very steep area west of the Wetlands. It was also the active area of the Dragonmaw clan, which the Alliance had never been able to completely eliminate after the orcs were defeated. Grim Batol, the mountain fortress built by the Wildhammer dwarves, was located here. Later, the Dragonmaw orcs occupied it and used it to imprison Alexstrasza, the Red Dragon Queen. After Rhonin and Vereesa rescued Alexstrasza, the Dragonmaw clan gradually disappeared.

Now, there are still a small number of Dragonmaw orcs entrenched in the easily defended Twilight Highlands, but they are not the rulers of this area. It has been controlled by a cult that worships the Old Gods—the Twilight's Hammer.

Nefarian's father, Deathwing, has always been the object of service for the Twilight's Hammer. As the Black Dragon Prince who closely followed his father's footsteps, he naturally received the full support of the Twilight's Hammer.

After receiving Nefarian's secret instructions, these cultists immediately cooperated with his troops to launch an attack.

The Booty Bay goblins suffered heavy losses in their surprise attack. Not only did they spit out half of Nefarian's property that they had swallowed before, but they were also forced to pay several times the amount as "ransom" to appease the Black Dragon Prince's anger and redeem their captured boss, Rivigaz.

Nefarian imprisoned Rivigaz, the black-hearted tycoon, and waited wholeheartedly for other goblins to send money to pay the ransom, but a few days later, what he waited for was the news that Rivigaz had bribed the guards who were guarding him and successfully escaped with their help.

Nefarian immediately burst into thunderous rage. His humble servants dared to betray him!

"These filthy green skins! I will execute them all!" Nefarian's gaffe roar resounded throughout Twilight Bastion.

Goblins and orcs are both green skins, so when they heard his roar, the Blackhand brothers, Rend and Maim, who led the Blackrock orcs, were frightened, fearing that the actions of those greedy ghosts would anger their master.

In front of him, a kindly human old man comforted, "Don't worry about these, Prince Nefarian, those goblins and orcs are insignificant."

Nefarian's forehead veins were exposed: "But they betrayed me! These Blackrock orcs love money so much that they are not even afraid of my anger burning them to death!"

The human old man slightly avoided the spittle splashing from the Black Dragon Prince's excited roar, and still said in a tepid voice: "If you want revenge so much, then implement our plan as soon as possible—when the time comes, the whole world will be ours, and you can execute whoever you want."

"Then what about my experimental materials? I have said it many times in the past few days, but none of the top experimental materials you mentioned have been delivered!"

"Don't worry, they'll be here soon."

"Soon, soon, I've heard you repeat this word more than twenty times in the past few days!"

"This time it's real." The human old man smiled, pointing to the sky, "If you don't believe me, look!"

Standing on the top floor of Twilight Bastion, Nefarian looked in the direction pointed by the human old man. A large airship was flying in the sky.

The leader on the airship was a two-headed ogre mage. Many older generation orcs knew his identity—he was once Gul'dan's most loyal servant, and also the first ogre warlock to accept fel energy.

Since his master Gul'dan died at the Tomb of Sargeras in the Broken Isles more than ten years ago, Cho'gall has defected to the Old Gods and formed the Twilight's Hammer organization, and began secret activities to crack the seal and welcome the arrival of the Old Gods.

In the past ten years, Cho'gall's actions have been quite effective. The current Twilight's Hammer forces are all over the world. Almost all intelligent races in Azeroth have joined it, forming a "harmonious" big family that strives and dedicates themselves to a common belief.

The airship docked at Twilight Bastion, and Cho'gall took the lead in getting off. The two heads said to the human old man: "Father (skinny old man), good to see you again (long time no see)."

The human old man returned the greeting in the same way: "Welcome back, Lord of Twilight!"

Cho'gall nodded and turned to Nefarian: "Your Highness (son of the great Deathwing), I have been looking forward to this meeting for a long time (experimental material, perfect experimental material, look, look), with your joining, our road to welcome Deathwing's return will be even easier (you have a genius head, that experiment)!"

Nefarian had to concentrate to distinguish the complete meaning that Cho'gall's two heads wanted to express. He perfunctorily responded to the ogre warlock, but his eyes quickly shifted to the three "experimental materials" carried down by several Twilight's Hammer believers.

These were three young and handsome men and women, a night elf woman, a human woman, and a high elf man.

However, Nefarian saw through the disguise of Transmutation at a glance. These three people had a common identity—dragons!

"Mylindra, the Green Dragon, Kaelestrasz, the Red Dragon, and Coregos, the Blue Dragon Princess!" Nefarian widened his eyes, and then exclaimed, "The quality of these experimental materials is much better than my previous ones!"

The human old man smiled: "I won't lie to you."

"Well, I'm very satisfied." Nefarian kept looking at these three comatose dragons of different identities—also the dragon heroes who decided to sacrifice themselves to seal the Qiraji in the War of the Shifting Sands. Three fools, the thought of his experiment immediately made his heart hot. The matter of the goblin tycoon Rivigaz playing him had long been forgotten.

"I want to start the experiment immediately!"

Nefarian immediately ordered his servants to move these three people to the laboratory.

After the impatient Black Dragon Prince left, Cho'gall looked at the human old man and asked, "Benedictus (I prefer to call you 'Father'), our actions in Silithus have been very successful (long live C'Thun!). So, how are the other parts of our plan going (long live N'Zoth!)?"

"Everything is going smoothly, Lord of Twilight." The human old man—also the former Archbishop Benedictus who was exposed and killed by Aiden in Northshire Abbey—replied.

He obviously knew better than Nefarian how to communicate with Cho'gall—that is, just listen to what his first head said—his second one-eyed head spoke a little crazy, and normal people could hardly keep up with the rhythm.

He was indeed dead. In order to prevent him from resurrecting, Aiden suggested that King Varian purify his body with holy fire. But for the Old Gods, resurrecting a person was too simple, whether there was a body or not was not important.

Because the Old Gods needed him, he was resurrected soon after and acted in the Twilight's Hammer in his true identity.

"As long as everything goes smoothly (without a doubt), then our great plan is about to be realized (just thinking about it makes me excited)! Let us work together (no one can stop the implementation of the plan)!"

"Yes, I very much agree with this." Benedictus smiled, "Then, for the next step of the plan, I have to leave first, Lord of Twilight!"

"Goodbye (we just met!)!"

—

After obtaining the most ideal experimental materials, Nefarian plunged into the laboratory, preparing to further improve his experimental plan after creating Chromaggus, a two-headed monster that fused the power of the five-colored dragons, and truly create an invincible chromatic dragon.

He already had a complete experimental plan for this, but he had been failing because he could not obtain truly qualified experimental materials. Before coming here, he could only secretly obtain ordinary dragons for experiments. In order to piece together the power of the five-colored dragons, he was sometimes so embarrassed that he even used the corpses of young dragons.

But now, the three experimental materials he obtained were all adult dragons, and their bloodlines were very powerful, especially the blue dragon princess, Korialstrasz—this was a true direct bloodline belonging to the Dragon Aspect!

He couldn't wait to start his experiment.

Nefarian still followed in his father's footsteps as in the original history, but his other family members had completely different destinies.

After the Outland War, the black dragon queen Sinestra lost her son with unlimited potential—the twilight dragon Dargonax. Later, she returned to Azeroth with the Naaru's spaceship, but the idea of continuing to create a more perfect twilight dragon had never been extinguished, or rather, her fantasy of creating a dragon that surpassed the power of all the guardian dragons and making all dragons submit had not been extinguished.

Aiden warned her of the terrible consequences of doing so, but that was just something that might happen in the future, and the Dragon Mother could not be frightened away by empty words. After the Nightmare Invasion War ended, she once again quietly left the Land of Righteousness, preparing to hide in a secret place to continue her experiments.

However, Sabellian stayed and became another black dragon hero in the Valoran Federation. Of course, Onyxia couldn't leave either, as she had a contract.

After the Battle for Azshara, Onyxia got a short vacation and prepared to go back to her dragon lair to take a look. Since accepting the task assigned by her father to corrupt Stormwind's politics, she hadn't been back to her dragon lair for several years. Now that she had come to Kalimdor and a major crisis had just been resolved, she certainly had to take the opportunity to go back and see if her servants had protected the treasures and dragon eggs in the dragon lair.

Onyxia's dragon lair was located in the southern part of Dustwallow Marsh. As the Alliance moved into Theramore, humans also began small-scale reclamation of this swamp. However, a large number of ogres and black dragonkin had been entrenched in this area, coupled with various natural and man-made disasters over the years, humans gave up the idea of venturing into this place. Because they had a better choice—as long as they kept heading west into the Barrens, there would be a large amount of unclaimed land suitable for reclamation waiting for people to develop.

Although the Barrens' name contains "barren," it is actually not a very desolate place. On the contrary, as the Valoran Expeditionary Force and the Tauren tribes of Mulgore jointly drove out the centaur clans entrenched here, this large area had become very safe, especially several oases, which were very fertile land suitable for reclamation. If a large amount of water could be introduced, even the entire vast Barrens could be developed into a green plain!

Because of this, human civilians who were temporarily unable to return to the Eastern Kingdoms, or who preferred to stay in Kalimdor for various reasons, had begun to leave Theramore and Dustwallow Marsh in large numbers, heading towards the Barrens in the west, preparing for a massive western development.

At the same time, the Alliance had been tracking the traces of Archmage Arugal and the werewolves, but they didn't know at first that the target was close at hand.

Arugal was in the southern part of Dustwallow Marsh.

He didn't plan to escape too far away from the beginning. Later, after summoning all the werewolves, he even wished that others would come to him, so that he could openly show the Alliance his power!

However, when he had tens of thousands of werewolf servants, a new problem arose—the ecological environment in the southern part of Dustwallow Marsh simply could not provide enough food for these tens of thousands of werewolves. Arugal could not conjure meat out of thin air to feed the werewolves. In just a few days, the other creatures in this area were subjected to devastating attacks by the werewolves.

The Stonemaul ogres, who had been entrenched here, quickly became their food, and these ogres, whom the Alliance was unwilling to spend energy cleaning up, were completely wiped out; then came the dragonkin guarding Onyxia's lair—some werewolves found this place. At first, these elite dragonkin taught the werewolves who dared to offend this place a bloody lesson, but then more and more werewolves overwhelmed this place.

Onyxia, who rushed back to the dragon lair, saw a scene that made her collapse: inside and outside her dragon lair were dragonkin scales, smooth bones, and damaged armor and weapons. The hungry werewolves ate all the edible parts of the dragonkin, even the meat on the bones was scraped clean; and in the dragon lair, only broken dragon eggs remained where she hatched dragon eggs. Neither the hatched nor unhatched young dragons were left. There were only dried blood stains and traces of what appeared to be egg white on the ground.

"Werewolves, werewolves!" Onyxia roared angrily with red eyes, "I will throw all of you into the lava and roast you to feed the dogs!!!"

In fact, two days before Onyxia returned, Arugal had discovered that the situation was somewhat out of control. Before, he could order the werewolves to do anything according to his wishes, but when the werewolves' appetite could not be satisfied, they began to disobey his orders.

When it was first discovered that some werewolves had been killed by the black dragonkin in the nearby dragon lair, Arugal believed that it was not appropriate to provoke the black dragon, but the werewolves disobeyed his order not to take revenge. They secretly gathered at night, and tens of thousands of werewolves pounced into Onyxia's dragon lair at night and massacred the place.

After feasting on dragon meat, the werewolves became obedient again, but once hunger struck, they would ignore Arugal's orders again. Soon the entire tribe began to become unconstrained, and the werewolves moved freely on the earth under the domination of appetite.

The hungry werewolves would not listen to Arugal's orders at all, but he was not willing to fail like this. He began to try to enslave the werewolves with magic.

If he could not make these werewolves obedient, then all his ambitions would become a joke, and he would also begin to pay the price for his unrestrained summoning of werewolves, because the Alliance's punishment was coming.

After Onyxia discovered the traces of the werewolves and reported them, not only did the Valoran Federation send troops to conquer them, but the Alliance forces in Theramore also actively responded. Arthas personally signed the order and took the lead in sending troops to the southern part of Dustwallow Marsh.

With the Nightmare Crisis over, King Terenas, who had been sleeping for a long time, successfully woke up. He was well taken care of during his coma, so he did not die silently like many people, but the old king's physical condition was not as good as before, and old age and disease began to plague him.

Terenas knew that he did not have much time left, but he saw that Arthas was becoming a qualified monarch, and his relationship with Jaina Proudmoore, the princess of Kul Tiras, the most steadfast ally of Lordaeron, was stable, so he had no regrets.

Realizing this, he began to consciously guide Arthas to complete the transfer of power.

This time, the plan to send troops to attack the werewolves first was achieved under his instruction.

The many twists and turns experienced in the past two years had made Terenas clearly see a fact: with the rise of the Valoran Federation, the once powerful Kingdom of Lordaeron had lost its former status. They had reached a point where they had to make concessions—this time, sending troops in advance was just to show goodwill to the Valoran Federation. Especially since the werewolf disaster before was caused by their own credulity in Arugal.

What's more, Aiden's act of calling on the will of the world to kill Xavius had already won him and the Valoran Federation countless friendships. It was very unwise to continue to insist on the differences between the old and new alliances and to use political means.