Conversation

"But Malorne and the others—" Aiden started to argue.

During the Outland War, he had once asked the Raven God Ansu—the Guardian of Dreams on Draenor—if binding the souls of ordinary people to the dream could resurrect them when the world was reshaped. He received an affirmative answer from the other party. Later, upon returning to Azeroth during the Malignancy Invasion, he temporarily seized control of the Emerald Dream and took the opportunity to bind the souls of all Valoran Heroes, including his own, to the Emerald Dream as a precaution.

He was brave enough to sacrifice himself on Ancient Beach not only because the situation demanded it, but also because he had the confidence of being able to resurrect. This allowed him to treat death as a brief transition, even considering it a long vacation. Therefore, his mindset was very relaxed, with no real concept of death, only seeing it as enduring some pain from being burned in exchange for a few days' vacation in the dream.

But now Elune actually told him that others couldn't resurrect him?

"They are Ancient Guardians born in Azeroth, inherently closely linked to this world, but you are not," Elune said with a smile, uttering words that greatly disappointed Aiden. "More importantly, they can be resurrected because of their relationship with the dream—they are Guardians, but you are not."

"So—this is the privilege of Guardians?" Aiden frowned.

He felt Elune had no reason to lie to him, but as the Moon Goddess, Elune would certainly not come specifically to discourage him. By saying this, she would likely point him towards another path.

"This is the privilege of Guardians 'on the list'," Elune emphasized the middle word—on the list.

"The list?"

"The list," Elune nodded, her expression becoming very indifferent. "Everything in the world has traces to follow, and the development of history always has a fixed line—I know you have investigated the structure of the timeline, so you should know what I am talking about."

Aiden tried to analyze Elune's words from an outsider's perspective. Then this so-called "list" should be the Guardians that the system has already set up to be resurrected, and obviously, Aiden is not on this list—meaning the method of resurrection through the dream is not feasible.

However, this is only one method of resurrection. For example, Aegwynn resurrected her Son Medivh—although the latter is a Guardian, he was the Guardian of Tirisfal, not some Ancient Guardian.

"You are considering other methods of resurrection?" Elune saw through Aiden's thoughts at a glance.

Aiden was startled, then nodded and said, "Yes."

"No matter what you have thought of, I will tell you, those methods are either extremely costly, or have endless hidden dangers, and are time-consuming and laborious, which will make you miss many things. I don't think you will want to try them."

"Then do you have any good suggestions? Please speak directly," Aiden didn't want to beat around the bush with the other party and asked directly.

"A trade," Elune looked at Aiden. "You help me complete one thing, and I will help you resurrect."

Seeing that the other party did not object, the Moon Goddess continued, "This is the second thing I want to say, which is actually very related to you—after the seal of the Elemental Plane was broken by you, the distance between the dream and the Real World has been greatly reduced. The cost of resurrecting the Ancient Guardians has become very 'cheap', but this benefits not only Mount Hyjal, but also the Troll—they have also taken the opportunity to resurrect the gods they worship."

"They should have stayed in the dream, because they were originally part of the dream—the resurrection of gods has far-reaching implications, they will make things spiral out of control, and make the future even worse."

Aiden really wanted to retort, "Is it my fault?" Because even if he hadn't opened the seal, Deathwing would have done so later. But upon closer thought, what Elune said wasn't entirely wrong—because he had severely altered history multiple times, causing everything to be completely unrecognizable.

In the classic storyline, although the Troll did indeed cause trouble during this period, they did not resurrect gods. And on this timeline, all the changes can be related to Aiden himself, so he had to admit that Elune's words made sense.

Aiden knew that Elune was here to issue a quest, so he went straight to the point. "Tell me, who do you want to deal with? How?"

"Some gods worshiped by the Troll. We cannot let order continue to collapse, and the Troll's act of resurrecting gods must be stopped."

"Oh—" So it was to eliminate dissidents. Aiden added Elune's purpose in his heart, but this was also a scene he was happy to see, after all, the Troll were also his enemies, but—"But why don't you do it yourself? I may not be the opponent of the Troll gods, and you are definitely much stronger than them!"

"Due to the rules, I cannot do it myself," Elune shook her head. "But I won't send you to your death—I will provide you with enough power to defeat those Troll gods who are still in the dream waiting to be resurrected."

"Alright," Aiden agreed—he had already accepted the quest anyway. The next step was probably to team up with the Moon Goddess to "farm monsters"—with a high-level NPC leading the way and providing buffs, he was only responsible for being the damage dealer, which wasn't bad at all.

He quickly realized that this was not an easy task: not because the enemies were too strong—but because the number was simply too large, too many to count, far beyond the "some" Elune mentioned, it was simply endless!

Some of the gods worshiped by these Troll did have considerable strength, but with Elune's help, these gods did not cause Aiden too much trouble. But after more than a week of continuously suppressing the resurrection plans of hundreds and thousands of Troll gods, he finally couldn't help but ask Elune again, "How many more are there?"

"Almost there," Elune's answer was unchanging, just as it had been when Aiden first asked her three days ago.

Aiden was speechless and could only follow Elune's guidance to deal with the next Troll god—these gods originally existed in the Emerald Dream in soul form. Unless in extremely special circumstances, souls do not die, so what Aiden did was to defeat them, causing them to lose a special energy called "soul essence" that they had accumulated over millions of years. Without this energy, these Troll gods could not be resurrected by the Troll in the Real World.

These days, Aiden almost purely treated this as a boring and monotonous "monster farming", unaware that his actions had extremely far-reaching effects on the outside world.

—

The history and civilization of the Troll are long-standing, much earlier than the Night Elves, and the Night Elves, with only a history of over ten thousand years, have quite a few demigod Guardians. The Troll have even more—perhaps even the Troll themselves don't know how many "gods" they worship, but "thousands" is definitely not an exaggeration to describe their number.

The Troll tribes gathered on Zandalar Island united according to the prophecy of Prophet Zul and swarmed out when the Cataclysm descended. Originally, in terms of numbers and strength alone, even if all the Troll tribes united, it would be difficult to shake the foundation of the Alliance, because just one Valoran Federation was enough to give them trouble. But when the distance between the Emerald Dream and the Real World was shortened, the situation was reversed.

—If you were to compare the number of god Guardians, perhaps the Guardians of all other races in the world combined would not even be a fraction of the Troll's.

Let alone resurrecting all the gods, even if they took the opportunity to resurrect only a small portion of them, that would be enough for them to sweep across the world!

They tasted the sweetness of resurrecting the "Poison Serpent Goddess" Ulatek, and a previous counterattack annihilated thousands of the Alliance's elite troops. This great victory gave them unparalleled confidence.

So the Troll priests ambitiously began to resurrect other gods—and then there was no then.

No matter how heartbrokenly the Troll priests called out and prayed, no matter how precious and rare the sacrifices they offered, no god responded to their requests to return from the dream to the Real World.

The Troll were extremely panicked, thinking that the gods had abandoned them. Until the "Poison Serpent Goddess" Ulatek, with a gloomy face and bursting with anger, ordered them to stop this meaningless action and send the priests into the dream to stop a certain enemy's destructive behavior. If they couldn't do it, they wouldn't be able to resurrect more gods.

Who else could this enemy be but Aiden?

It was because of his destruction that the Troll, who were originally preparing for a large-scale counterattack, now had to retreat and prepare to unite with their ancient allies—the Mogu—to jointly resist these enemies, just as they did over ten thousand years ago.

And the Alliance, deeply wary of the "Poison Serpent Goddess" that the Troll had just resurrected, did not dare to attack rashly and instead accelerated their contact with the Pandaren.

Both sides began to actively seek allies to band together, and the various forces on the new continent entered a state of calm before the storm.

However, the war on the new continent was not the main theme, the "Cataclysm" was, and the protagonist of the current era was Deathwing—he disappeared for ten days after the battle on Ancient Beach. Ten days later, reconnaissance troops from the Valoran Federation's aerial observation station in the eastern sea area of the Land of Justice discovered his 蹤跡.

The Black Dragon appeared from the Lost Isles—an island controlled by Goblin cartels. He triggered a strong volcanic eruption and earthquake, and then flew further east in the rolling smoke and dust—towards the Maelstrom.

Goblins are a neutral race that values money over life. These little green guys are masters in the field of venture capital.

The Goblin cartels' "venture capital" does not just refer to economic trade; it also includes "political investment." Most Goblins are more willing to deal with the Alliance. Obviously, this alliance has the most resources in the world, the lowest risk, is very safe, and has good returns.

However, some Goblins like higher risk, higher reward investments—such as investing in the "Destroyer" Deathwing!

This time, Deathwing appeared from the Lost Isles precisely because there was a group of Goblins providing him with cover, allowing him to perfectly evade the Alliance's sight.

This was not the first time the Goblins had done this—in fact, during the Second War, there were Goblin cartels that colluded with the Horde for more war profits. And since then, there have been Goblins serving Deathwing—more than a decade ago, when Deathwing was shot down into the Maelstrom by the Dragon Kings and the Archmages of the Kirin Tor, it was a group of Goblin engineers who "repaired" Deathwing's shattered body.

The place where they worked was Deepholm, which was called "Deathwing's crash site."

But now is not the time to hold these insatiable Goblins accountable. Deathwing's reappearance symbolizes that he is about to begin his true journey of destruction—in these ten days, he must have found a way to deal with the threat of the Focusing Iris, and Aiden has not yet been resurrected. Who can stop him from destroying the world now?

The Alliance was in an unprecedented crisis. Although everyone was dispatching their most powerful Heroes by airships, zeppelins, floating fortresses, etc., to pursue the Destroyer, no one was confident about whether they could stop Deathwing's madness.

At this time, they desperately missed Aiden, wanting him to appear immediately and become their backbone.

And at this moment, Aiden was still "teaming up to farm monsters" with Elune in the dream.

He shattered the bodies of the few Troll who tried to intercept him, and watching these Troll turn into specks of light and disappear without a trace, he truly felt like he was playing a game.

"These are so weak—which direction should I go next?" he asked.

Previously, his opponents were mostly various animal gods, such as lynxes, leopards, tigers, rhinos, poisonous snakes, eagles... allowing him to witness the ancient ecosystem of Azeroth. The souls of these animals were gods worshiped by the Troll, and their strength varied. Some required Elune to provide him with power to defeat, while a group of others wasn't enough for him to handle with one hand.

It was just that in the past few days, groups of Troll souls often proactively came looking for trouble, which he didn't find too surprising. It was just that the soul strength of these Troll was too weak compared to his, and they didn't cause him any trouble at all.

"There are no more," Elune replied.

"Then let's teleport to the next layer," Aiden shrugged.

The Emerald Dream is a multi-layered special world, and he had known this since he gained the Guardian of Dreams authority.

Aiden thought Elune meant that this layer had been cleared, but the other party then told him, "This is already the last layer."

"So—my mission—is completed?" Aiden asked in surprise.

Souls do not need sleep, and day and night are often reversed in the dream, so he had been fighting or on the way to fight these days. Upon hearing that it was completed, he was instantly extremely excited.

—This meant he could "turn in the quest."

Could he be resurrected next?

"Yes, it's completed," Elune nodded and admitted.

Aiden looked at the Moon Goddess with anticipation and asked, "Then can I be resurrected?"

"Yes," the other party gave an affirmative answer, "But—"

"Alright," Aiden knew it wouldn't be so smooth, but he treated it as a series of quests. "What do I need to do next?"

"Answer a few questions for me," Elune looked at Aiden seriously, and Aiden looked back seriously, indicating that he would answer carefully.

He thought the Moon Goddess was going to test him, but he didn't expect the other party to be asking, or even "consulting."