Back in the day, Duke would have called himself insane just for thinking this way. But now? He felt less like a scholar and more like a gambler on the brink of a high-stakes, soul-betting, Jedi-level comeback. He could have folded early, admitted defeat, and retreated to lick his wounds in the taverns of Stormwind, but no—he was doubling down, wagering every last shred of his moral integrity on one last desperate gamble. Why? To snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, to earn the respect that slayed Medivh once denied him, and, most importantly, to reclaim his own battered sense of self-worth.
Sounds crazy, right? But it's not the reckless madness of a fool. No, this was the weight of the world strapped firmly to Duke's broad shoulders.
Khadgar was dead. Kaput. Gone. And in some cruel cosmic joke, all the destiny and responsibility that had once belonged to the legendary mage now landed squarely on Duke's unassuming head.
Kingdom's fate? Check. The fragile future of humanity? Double check. The survival of Azeroth itself? Triple check. This wasn't just a game of strategy; it was the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure, and Duke's choices here could rewrite the entire story—or doom it forever.
Sure, Duke could have said, "Screw it," abandoned his precious integrity like an old cloak, and let Lothar's elite soldiers throw their lives away in a blaze of glory. They were ready for that sacrifice—heroes always were. But who could promise that the next level of this deadly chessboard wouldn't demand even more blood? And who could Duke himself face, knowing those trusting, fierce eyes had looked to him for salvation?
He didn't realize it then, but Duke was standing at the crossroads of every epic hero's journey. A place where many falter. Where instinct screams to protect oneself, to run, or worse, to sacrifice others without a second thought. Some become cowards, some become tyrants, some simply turn their noses up and walk away.
No, for the first time, Duke chose to follow that stubborn flicker inside his heart — the one that whispered, "Change the story. Rewrite the fate. Be the hero nobody expected."
So he took that step—the one he'd never dared dream of before.
Lothar's sharp intuition and Garona's half-orc senses picked up on the change immediately. What moments ago was a battlefield ripe for tragedy suddenly erupted in an explosion of unexpected reinforcements.
Out of nowhere, more than a thousand bizarre-looking fishmen—grinning, gurgling, and wielding what looked like weapons made from driftwood and bad decisions—charged forward, roaring their fishy battle cries.
Alongside them, over two hundred giant jackals, towering at over two meters, snarled and snapped, muscles bulging under coarse fur.
And nearly a hundred Nagas slithered and hissed, including a fierce female Naga priest whose glare alone could curdle milk.
"This is..." Lothar blinked, jaw practically hitting the floor as he looked around at the monstrous reinforcements suddenly surrounding them.
"Our backup!" Duke bellowed with a laugh that somehow mixed relief and madness.
"Long live Sir Edmund!"
Morale skyrocketed like a rocket on fire. Lothar, caught off-guard but secretly relieved, sidled up to Duke and whispered, "You paid with your soul for this?"
Duke shrugged, trying to sound casual but sounding more like a philosopher on the edge of existential meltdown: "Integrity is like a boomerang. Lose it once, and it might come back—but damn, does it hurt on the way."
Everyone was ready to throw down their lives for humanity, but Duke? Duke was the one ducking behind the lines, hiding in a bubble of safety. Was that really right?
"Look at those orcs," Duke said, eyes drifting beyond the checkerboard battlefield, beyond Karazhan's spires, beyond Azeroth itself. "If there ever comes a day when I lose my mind, my soul gone to madness... promise me you'll be the one to put me down. With your own hands."
His smile was strangely light, yet carried the weight of a thousand battles. Lothar felt a lump rise in his throat and patted Duke on the shoulder with a soldier's brotherhood.
"Deal. If that day comes, I'll do it myself. But if I get lucky and return to Stormwind, I'll spend the rest of my days carving a statue of you so big, the whole kingdom will see it from the Valley of the Kings."
Now that was a manly promise—a heroic vow.
Duke, suddenly feeling like he'd earned the title "Epic Hero of Azeroth," turned to face the battlefield with renewed fire. "Let's crush these bastards first."
Thanks to Duke's soul injection, the raw power stats between the armies shifted from a bleak 11-to-89 massacre to a tense 45-to-55 slugfest. Numbers improved, yes, but Duke knew better—his "reinforcements" were a wild, unpredictable bunch.
The gnoll warlord Hogg and his unruly pack, alongside the gray-scaled Naga priests and their male brethren, plus a thousand fishmen whose loyalty was as reliable as a wet paper towel—this ragtag sea-and-land coalition was about as trustworthy as a goblin with a grenade.
Lothar noticed it too. "Duke, are those... things under your control?"
"Sort of," Duke grinned. "Murlocs hit the right flank first, gnolls charge the left. Then we punch right through their middle."
Lothar, the seasoned commander, immediately understood the strategy: split the enemy, break through, and go for the kill.
"Nice," he said grimly. "This death game ends with the other general dead or us gone."
The battlefield erupted into chaos as the murlocs took their oddly bouncy, clumsy steps and surged forward, their battle cries a mash of guttural clicks and garbled nonsense.
On the surface, the wave of fishmen seemed poised to crush the orcs like a tidal wave of aquatic doom.
But appearances, as always, were deceiving.
The orcs in front formed a living green wall of muscle and steel.
The murlocs lunged with crude spears—three seconds from stabbing the first orc square in the chest.
Huge orc weapons slammed down like wrecking balls. Massive hammers and axes pulverized fishy heads and fragile spears alike into soggy fishpaste.
The impact stalled the murloc advance completely.
Frontline murlocs panicked and tried to retreat. The ones behind, clueless and committed, kept pushing forward, squeezing their own friends like sardines packed into a too-small barrel.
"Hahaha! You slimy fishmen! Die, die—" The orc chieftain's guards bellowed, chomping their bloody fangs and hacking through the confused murlocs like they were slicing vegetables for a stew.
Each brutal blow smashed multiple fishmen into unrecognizable goo or chopped them into chunks. The murlocs, overwhelmed and disoriented by this savage onslaught, quickly descended into chaos.
If not for the Nagas barking orders from behind, the entire fishman front might have collapsed into a panicked frenzy.