Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 629: Durnholde

"By the Light! Most of those orcs are battle-hardened killers who've been forged in the fires of brutal gladiatorial combat!" A general hissed the grim truth like a snake revealing its venom.

Duke's eyes rolled so hard they nearly fell out of his skull and rolled across the floor like wayward dice.

If you don't fight, you die. If you do fight, you still die. Why in Azeroth's name would you choose the path that leads to an even more spectacular demise?

Terenas was so mind-numbingly stupid that instead of crushing these green-skinned monsters like the insects they were, he practically handed them a training manual titled "How to Become Elite Killing Machines for Dummies." With Terenas's legendary lack of intelligence, if he didn't meet his maker soon, it would be a waste of perfectly good oxygen that could be used by actual thinking beings! The man had all the tactical brilliance of a brain-dead murloc!

Thank the Light he ran his beloved son through with cold steel, otherwise Duke would have been stuck cleaning up Lordaeron's mess like some cosmic janitor mopping up after the apocalypse.

Duke didn't give a flying gryphon's feather if the entire northern continent was reduced to smoldering rubble and ash. He'd just hunker down in his beloved Stormwind like a dwarf in his mountain fortress. After all, it wasn't like he had to guard some mystical World Tree or any other impossible nonsense... right? RIGHT?!

So now he had to bear the consequences of Lordaeron's catastrophic blunders like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders?

Was it too much to ask for a few decent elite troops without having to move heaven and earth?

Nearby, a gaggle of Lordaeron generals watched Duke's eyelids twitch like angry storm clouds, looking ready to explode like a goblin's experimental bomb at any moment. Not a single soul dared to utter even a whisper.

Dalaran was under siege. By all rights, the 80,000 elite soldiers of the Scarlet Crusade should have been able to help Dalaran hold the line against the Scourge like a dam against a flood. But the only nightmare scenario was that the humans would arrive to reinforce, and the orcs would come thundering in right behind them like wolves following the scent of blood!

Duke snatched the intelligence report stuffed with orc information, reading it over and over again three times like a scholar trying to decipher ancient runes, then let loose a sneer that could have frozen the Sunwell: "You Lordaeron fools are absolutely priceless. You sent a measly 3,000 guards to watch over 10,000 orcs? That's like sending a handful of gnomes to guard a dragon's hoard! And when the orcs in every arena rioted with Brill as their rallying point, they all broke free like demons unleashed from the Twisting Nether, but you covered it up because it coincided with Arthas's so-called 'triumphant return'? Even the Warsong Clan, those berserkers who should have been wiped off the map, showed up to this party?"

Duke's sneer lashed across every Lordaeron general's face like a whip made of pure shame and humiliation. It was an invisible brand of failure that made their faces burn hotter than a forge in the depths of Blackrock Mountain.

Most of the generals hung their heads lower than a shamed orc's tusks.

This was Terenas's catastrophic failure, but as long as they wore the cursed epaulettes of Lordaeron, they had to carry this burden like a millstone around their necks.

At this moment, Renault's voice piped up weaker than a sick kobold: "There are only 10,000 orcs in Durnholde Keep..."

His father Alexandros exploded with the fury of a thousand suns: "You worthless whelp! You have no right to open your mouth in this war council!"

Duke raised his hand like a king commanding silence, stopping old Mograine mid-tirade.

"Listen here, little prince, even though I'm only half a generation older than you, you're about as qualified to speak on military matters as a murloc is to give swimming lessons to fish." Duke immediately caught Renault's defiant expression and laughed like a man who'd just heard the world's best joke: "They claim there are 10,000 orcs, but in reality, there are far more than that number. The extras are those that the corrupt guards secretly sold to the gladiatorial arenas like cattle to the slaughter. So we're looking at least 15,000 orcs who harbor more hatred for humans than the Burning Legion has for creation itself."

The moment Duke finished speaking, every Lordaeron general's face turned darker than the depths of the Maelstrom.

Corruption! Filth! Reckless stupidity beyond measure!

It was absolutely the cardinal sin of military strategy to charge forward blindly without knowing your enemy's true strength - like rushing into a dragon's lair wearing nothing but your underwear.

Under normal circumstances, even the most elite human recruits would be slaughtered like sheep when outnumbered three to one against orcs. The orcs' reputation as a "warrior race" wasn't just hot air and bravado.

If they counted all the orcs who had attacked Durnholde, there were at least 30,000 of the green-skinned brutes, and even Mograine's 80,000 elite troops would be in deeper trouble than a gnome in a giant's boot.

At this point, Duke raised his second finger like a prophet delivering doom: "Second point - the number of orcs currently dug in at Durnholde isn't just 30,000 or 50,000. We're looking at least 100,000 of these bloodthirsty savages!"

This news hit them like a meteor crashing into Azeroth!

Mograine and the others stood there stunned, looking like they'd been turned to stone by a medusa's gaze.

One hundred thousand? Where in the name of all that's holy did that army come from?

"What percentage of the prisoners are orc laborers?" Abendis asked, his voice trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

"Zero," Duke sighed like a man watching his own funeral. "And these aren't your run-of-the-mill, second-rate tribal fodder. These are definitely elite warriors from the first-tier clans - the cream of the bloodthirsty crop."

"What in the Twisting Nether?!" Old Mograine and the others reacted with horror that would make a banshee proud.

As veterans who had survived the Second War and spent years fighting the remnants of the Horde like exterminating cockroaches, they knew better than anyone the vast difference in combat prowess between the Horde's elite first-tier clans and their second-rate cousins.

Abendis asked with the desperation of a drowning man: "Where did this army of 100,000 elite warriors come from?"

Duke spread out the intelligence reports and pointed at the tribal clan banners sketched by the scouts. They recognized most of the other flags, but one stood out like a beacon. While he was pointing at the familiar Warsong clan symbol, Duke's finger moved to another banner that was as foreign to them as draconic script.

"This is the Frostwolf Clan. Once the fourth most powerful clan in the entire Horde, ranking behind only the Blackrock, Warsong, and Bleeding Hollow clans. Despite having fewer numbers, their combat effectiveness is absolutely legendary."

"Frostwolf?" Everyone stared at the name like it was written in an alien tongue.

Duke spoke with the gravity of a man delivering last rites: "It's no surprise you don't know them. This clan was exiled by the first Warchief Blackhand and the Warlock Gul'dan due to political differences when they first set foot on Azeroth in the first year of the Dark Portal. They crossed the entire southern continent in secret like ghosts in the night, sailed across the sea from Baradin Bay under cover of darkness, passed through Hillsbrad like shadows, and have been hiding deeper in the Alterac Mountains than dwarves hide their gold."

"How many elite orc warriors does the Frostwolf Clan command?" Mograine asked with the dread of a man staring into the abyss.

"No fewer than fifty thousand battle-tested killers."

Duke didn't know the exact numbers, but since the Frostwolf clan hadn't faced any serious persecution in the past fifteen years, it wasn't shocking that Thrall, returning to his ancestral homeland like a prodigal son, had won their fierce loyalty. Fifty thousand was already a conservative estimate that erred on the side of optimism.

Every general who had survived the Second War wore expressions grimmer than death itself.

In this situation, forget saving Dalaran - they couldn't even save their own hides from the coming storm.

The cursed undead combined with orcs burning with hatred for humanity would be enough to turn everyone on the entire continent into worm food.

Queen Calia, perched in the seat of power, looked around like a deer caught in torchlight. Even though she knew about as much about military strategy as a fish knows about mountain climbing, she could sense that disaster loomed like storm clouds on the horizon.

Unconsciously, every eye in the room turned toward Duke like sunflowers following the sun.

They gazed upon this legendary commander who, more than a decade ago, had crushed millions of orcs with less than one-third of their military might like David slaying Goliath.

If anyone else were sitting in command, this would be a hopeless dead end with no light at the end of the tunnel.

But Duke was different. He was Edmund Duke - a living legend recognized by all three major Alliance races, a man who turned impossible odds into victory dances!

"Since you all look to me as your supreme commander, I will naturally lead you to carve a path through this chaos like a sword through silk..." Duke's youthful face radiated confidence that could light up the darkest dungeon. His powerful aura of commanding destiny and toying with mighty enemies like a cat with mice made all three women present feel their hearts race like warhorses in battle.

Calia, Ilucia, and Sally all gazed at him with the adoration of true believers witnessing a miracle.

Meanwhile, at Durnholde Keep...

"No, don't kill me—mercy—please—"

The last human guard was ripped apart alive like a rag doll in the hands of a giant. The orcs, who had endured torture for countless years, tore off the guard's limbs and head one by one as if dismantling a broken toy, reducing him to nothing but scattered chunks of meat and bone.

"Hahahaha! HAHAHAHA!" The blood-soaked orc threw back his head and laughed with the wild abandon of madness unleashed.

"Long live Thrall, son of Durotan!"

"Long live Orgrim Doomhammer, the true Warchief!"

"Long live Grom Hellscream, the Iron Wolf!"

The orcs cheered with voices that shook the very foundations of the keep, raising their crude weapons high into the air to display their rippling muscles like monuments to war itself.

Thrall, gripping a battle axe still dripping with fresh blood, felt exhilaration surge through his veins like liquid fire.

Even he had suffered far too long under the boot of human oppression.

The whip marks from his human captors still seemed to burn across his back like brands of shame and fury that would never fully heal.