Cause and effect

Nozdormu was filled with shock and anger. He craned his neck, staring at Aiden, his vertical pupils almost turning into straight lines, flashing with dangerous light: "So, you think you can contend with me through mere physical combat?"

The Dragon King had already realized that Aiden had also lost the power to manipulate time.

"You'll know once you try!" Compared to the Dragon King's solemn and angry expression, Aiden seemed much more relaxed.

Having let go of his mental baggage, he had decided to go all out!

What was so scary about a dragon without divine power? Back in Icecrown Citadel, he was already able to heavily injure and drive away Nozdormu from that timeline—although with the help of other heroes, so much time has passed, and he is no longer the same person. Especially after the Nightmare War, with the help of the will of the whole world to kill the Nightmare King, his strength has greatly improved.

Although he wouldn't dare say he could defeat Nozdormu with one hundred percent certainty, at least his chances of winning were much higher than Nozdormu's!

"Arrogant!" Nozdormu roared in anger.

Even if he lost his divine power, a dragon was still the most powerful creature in the world in terms of physical combat, far surpassing humans!

Back when the five Guardian Dragons hadn't received their guardian powers, they were able to defeat "Father of Dragons" Galakrond with their primitive abilities. Nozdormu would let this human experience the Dragon King's fury!

Aiden was unwilling to engage in further argument; facts would prove everything!

He raised the Silver Judgment and strode towards Nozdormu. As he ran forward, a pair of golden wings unfolded on his back. With a flap of his wings, he soared directly into the sky, charging towards Nozdormu.

The Dragon King could fly, and so could he!

Seeing that the other party had taken the initiative to attack, Nozdormu also met him head-on without hesitation. The gale stirred up by his tens-of-meters-long wings blew yellow sand all over the ground. Ordinary people would not even be able to stand firmly in such wind force. The power of his mere flapping wings was more powerful than many spells.

Amidst the yellow sand, the Dragon King raised his sharp claws and slashed fiercely at the insignificant human. Although his massive body made him somewhat clumsy, Nozdormu's huge claws covered an attack range that no human weapon could reach. Moreover, his entire body could be used as a weapon; even falling down could crush dozens of people!

Seeing the dragon claws grabbing over, Aiden immediately summoned a vine that shot out from his hand, entangled Nozdormu's neck, and then pulled hard, turning in mid-air to avoid the dragon claw attack and break through, waving the flaming sword in his hand and stabbing towards the opponent's throat.

Nozdormu twisted his neck, trying to dodge, but the disadvantage of being too large was fully revealed at this moment. He only avoided the most vital throat, and the left side of his neck was still pierced by the Silver Judgment. His bronze scales had a defensive power stronger than many legendary armors, but they still couldn't withstand the burning holy sword.

Aiden only felt a slight obstruction from the tip of the sword before it pierced through. As Nozdormu waved his huge dragon claws, wanting to crush him, he had already pulled out his sword and retreated in advance. Slightly golden dragon blood spurted out from the wound. In just the first round, the Dragon King suffered a heavy blow!

Nozdormu was both shocked and angry. He flapped his wings and flew higher, then raised his claws and slashed off the green vines wrapped around his neck. After regaining his freedom, he let out a earth-shattering roar, opened his giant mouth that was big enough to swallow an elephant, revealing a mouthful of sharp fangs, and pounced towards Aiden.

The power of time was all the power Nozdormu had besides his physical combat ability. Losing it reduced his deterrent force to less than one-tenth of what it was. But for Aiden, it was only one of the three types of energy he controlled. He could still use the power of the Holy Light and the power of nature, still possessing at least two-thirds of his strength!

Even when both sides possessed their full power, Nozdormu might not be able to completely defeat Aiden. And now, his battle with Aiden had only one destined outcome—complete defeat!

After several more rounds of fighting, Nozdormu discovered that his flying wings could not give him an advantage at all. Moreover, his left wing had just been entangled by a large mass of thorny vines, covered with dense small wounds. Each time he flapped his wings, he would be in excruciating pain, making it difficult to even maintain his balance.

Left with no choice, Nozdormu had to move the battlefield to the ground.

But this still couldn't change the balance of power. After landing, Aiden could unleash even more powerful natural forces. With a wave of his hand, he scattered a handful of seeds. Under the catalysis of natural power, these seeds instantly transformed into a large green forest in a few breaths. Then, hundreds of large trees suddenly stood up, turning into treants, swarming towards Nozdormu, while those flowers turned into archers spitting thorns, shooting countless thorns at the enemy. There were even poisonous bee-like insects pouncing on him, stinging the wounds on the body of this high-ranking Dragon King, making him wish he were dead.

"Feel the wrath of nature!" Aiden didn't even need to step forward himself, just standing in the distance and summoning large swathes of thunderclouds and hurricanes. No matter where Nozdormu ran, the black clouds followed. The lightning in the thunderclouds locked onto this King of Time, rolling down towards him.

Treants beat him, flower demons spat, bee-like insects stung his wounds, vines bound his movements, lightning struck his body wildly, and hurricanes and mists obscured his vision…

Before the power of nature, Nozdormu's anger turned into fear. In just over ten minutes, the once-invincible Nozdormu suffered complete defeat. He was tortured to the point of near death by this endless attack.

What made him even more grieved was that after landing, Aiden simply stood in place controlling these natural forces, not even bothering to participate in the siege himself.

How could a dignified Guardian Dragon fall to such a miserable end?

When Nozdormu was exhausted and covered in wounds, he could no longer resist the divine power of the Staff of Time that solidified time and space. Like the other bronze dragons, he turned into a gray statue.

Aiden walked towards this huge bronze dragon king, whose eyes still held anger and unwillingness, and said, "I won."

Nozdormu couldn't speak, but his solidified gaze was enough to express everything.

"You are very unconvinced because I defeated you in the field you are best at."

"But this is your own fault. I didn't come to fight at all. I just wanted to borrow your Caverns of Time to go back—Nozdormu, I have seen you in the world I am from." Aiden's eyes were filled with sarcasm and mockery, "You really are the same, no wonder you are inseparable."

He reached out and summoned the Staff of Time. The fluctuations it emitted ceased, and the solidified time and space returned to normal.

Anachronos saw his father's huge body crashing to the ground. His body was covered in wounds, and he looked badly injured. And the enemy of the Bronze Dragonflight had disappeared.

The battle had been decided.

The moment Nozdormu fell, the bronze dragons saw their idol, their Dragon King, defeated, as if they had seen the end of the world. This was not only the Dragon King falling, but also the collapse of the bronze dragons' beliefs.

They had failed.

"Quick, go back! Stop him…" Nozdormu's weak voice came out intermittently.

Anachronos looked in horror at the entrance to the Caverns of Time, where the golden portal should have been blocked by a forest, countless treants, flower demons, and bee-like insects were watching them intently, guarding the entrance to the death.

—

Aiden defeated Nozdormu, but he was not a bloodthirsty madman. He had only come to find a way home. Now that the roadblock had been knocked down, he naturally had the right to reap the spoils of war.

The spoils of war in the Caverns of Time were naturally the information from those timelines.

Although he didn't have the help of the bronze dragons and needed to do it himself, Aiden was also happy to come into contact with the mysterious power of timelines. In the past, this power had caused him great trouble and even made him take countless detours, so understanding its essence now would also allow him to deal with enemies who tried to use this power to obstruct him again in the future.

Aiden remembered that before Chromie took him through the timeline, Dragon Queen Soridormi and Prince Anachronos used the power of the three huge hourglasses at the bottom to send them away. Then the secret of the timeline was likely hidden in those three hourglasses.

Aiden went straight to this place, arriving in the middle of the three hourglasses. Although he didn't know what spell or method to use to open it, based on the similarity of the essence of time, he tried to communicate with the power of the Staff of Time.

He guessed that these three hourglasses were likely Titan technology facilities, similar to those inside the Gnarled Tree in the Emerald Dream. If so, he might be able to directly obtain usage rights. When that happened, the system voice would naturally teach him how to use the power of the timeline.

As Aiden's power seeped in, the device controlling time began to operate. Golden light shone beneath his feet, and a long-awaited voice entered his mind:

"Accessing timeline management system."

"Verifying permissions."

"Verification successful."

"Welcome, User—Titan!"

Everything was as Aiden had guessed: these three hourglasses, or rather, the entire Caverns of Time, were also a Titan device.

He was invigorated, feeling himself being drawn into a wondrous space.

This was a space composed of countless intersecting lines, woven into an irregular golden web. Aiden tried to immerse his mind in a certain point, and he immediately saw Azeroth's ancient period: the emergence of the first human nation, the Arathor Empire; the elven king Anasterian uniting with this nascent race to defeat the trolls.

Aiden explored another timeline, and the scene before him changed to the ancient era's brutal war between the troll empires and the Aqir insectoids, leading the troll civilization from its peak to decline. After that, a dark troll tribe gathered beside the Well of Eternity mutated under the special energy of the well water, becoming the night elves.

He explored a certain point in other timelines, seeing different histories. Some were basically consistent with what he knew, while others had undergone great changes.

For example, in the normal timeline, Jaina's summoning of the elemental tidal wave to flood Orgrimmar was prevented, but he saw the world after Jaina's success in a certain timeline. There were many such instances; many common points on the web-like timeline had completely different events occurring, making it difficult for him to distinguish which were normal and which were abnormal.

The histories on the timelines were actually happening, not like illusions at all. No wonder Nozdormu couldn't distinguish who was the real him and who was just a scale-clone of himself.

Aiden, remembering his true purpose, put aside the curious attempts to explore the secrets of the timeline for the first time and prepared to find which timeline he could return to. He quickly mastered the technique: as long as he locked onto a certain point in time, he could only view the history of that point in time across all timelines.

Aiden believed that he was unique, so he only needed to find a timeline between the 19th and 21st years after the Dark Portal where he appeared and participated in historical events.

There was no clear flow of time within this timeline web; everything was the operation of thought. Aiden didn't know how long it had been when he heard a conversation mentioning his name from someone else.

He shifted to that scene and saw a scene in the Emerald Dream: Green Dragon Leyara reporting Aiden's arrival to Ysera. Ysera was immediately excited, revealing a sealed history to Malfurion and Cenarius beside her.

This shouldn't have been a special conversation, but as Aiden watched, he heard Ysera mention that he had appeared in the War of the Ancients and was the key figure in the victory of that war!

In Ysera's narrative, ten thousand years ago, Aiden had already fought alongside Cenarius, Malfurion, and the night elves. And the reason they forgot about him was because time had obscured their memories—that is to say, Aiden would, in a few years, become the key figure in the original historical plot, with Rhonin, Krasus, and Broxigar traveling to the ancient era under Nozdormu's guidance and resisting the Burning Legion's first invasion.

After watching this scene, Aiden immediately thought of the completely different fate trajectory of Prince Arygos of the blue dragonflight in the original world. At that time, he and Anna both thought that someone had come to Azeroth before them and slightly changed the fate of some of the blue dragonflight, but combining Ysera's words in the dream, Aiden could easily draw a conclusion—it was very likely that he himself had traveled to the past in the future and changed the fate of the blue dragons during the War of the Ancients!

Time had obscured the night elves' memories, and even Aiden himself didn't know there would be such a scene. This chaotic cause and effect took him some effort to sort everything out.

"Another causality?"

He thought of Blackmore's fate in this world. First, King Blackmore, who became an agent of the Infinite Dragonflight, tried to invade their timeline, and then there was Aiden and Chromie's time travel mission.

Chromie's arrival in this world may have triggered the butterfly effect, leading to Thrall's death as an infant. And Aiden's arrival and assassination prompted Blackmore to embark on the path of researching and pursuing the power of time, eventually becoming an agent of the Infinite Dragonflight.

They traveled to this world, clearly wanting to prevent the birth of that future King Blackmore, but everything they did led to that result instead.

If what happened to Blackmore was the present result destined for the past process, then what about Arygos?

Was there also a force compelling Aiden to embark on the path of traveling through history and changing the past?

The destined past changes the future that has not yet happened?

What is the reason for this?

Aiden was deeply trapped in the intertwined time, fate, and cause and effect, unable to extricate himself. His understanding of the past and future was deeply troubled by these events:

"If the future is destined, then why have I changed so much after traveling to Azeroth?"

"Is everything I've done designed, with an invisible hand controlling everything?"

"My time travel is also arranged… is it a complete plan?"

He thought of his discussion with Zilean a long time ago: "Are we people trapped in a bottle?"

After traveling through and experiencing so many things, it seemed that all his explorations had returned to the starting point, and all his efforts were proven to be under someone else's control.

This world, and the chaotic timelines before him, were like a huge cage trapping everyone within it. Everyone's ending was destined before they were even born.

He saw the fate of everyone on this timeline. Even though it was only the 24th year after the Dark Portal, the trajectories for the next ten, twenty, one hundred, and ten thousand years were already clear. Everyone's fate was engraved on the timeline.

Now that King Blackmore of Lordaeron was missing, Arthas in Stormwind City soon confirmed the news, followed by a time of counterattack and revenge. He spent 8 months to complete the restoration of his country, becoming the true master of Lordaeron again.

Kael'thas, unwilling to fail, was lured by the Lich King of Northrend and formed the Cult of the Damned. Although this time was 8 years later than in history, it eventually came.

And then there were those later events: the Scourge, the Burning Legion, the Nightmare, Outland, the Cataclysm… and the more distant End Time. These were all designed. Although many details had changed, the general trajectory remained the same.

Other timelines were also like this. The web-like timeline trapped everyone, and no one could contend with fate!

"This kind of world is wrong! The world shouldn't be like this! Fate shouldn't be like this!"

Aiden exited the timeline system and saw the irregularly flowing sand in the three huge hourglasses before him. His heart was filled with rage.

"Timelines… Titans… the Pantheon, all of this is a conspiracy!"

He thought of the Pantheon, of the various Titan devices with different functions.

The Re-Origination system, destroying the world and recreating it; the Blueprint system for backup and restoration; the timeline system for monitoring the operation of all things; the observers for dealing with emergencies…

Could it be that everything was secretly controlled by the Titans of the Pantheon? They demanded that the world evolve strictly according to their predetermined trajectory. Was this their purpose and means?