Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 612: The Gladiator’s Last Stand

Time flies faster than a bat out of hell.

No matter how tough as nails a soldier might be, Father Time always wins in the end.

No matter how legendary a hero becomes, every dog has its day—and then it's over.

In the blood-soaked city of Brill in Tirisfal Glades of Lordaeron, what was once a sleepy hamlet had transformed into one of the most infamous gladiatorial hellholes in all the kingdom. Every single day brought fresh carnage and spine-tingling spectacles of brutality that would make a grown man lose his lunch. Seven arenas of varying sizes dotted the city like festering wounds, each one packed tighter than sardines in a can with bloodthirsty spectators hungry for violence.

Sure, the cream of the crop gladiatorial extravaganzas happened in Lordaeron City itself, but Brill? Brill was where you went when you wanted your entertainment served with an extra helping of savage brutality and a side of "holy-crap-did-that-really-just-happen."

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, prepare yourselves for the green-skinned hurricane of destruction! The one, the only, the absolutely bone-crushingly unstoppable orc gladiator who's been mopping the floor with his enemies for 88 straight victories—the utterly BRUTAL Thrall!"

As the announcer's voice boomed through the magical sound amplifiers like thunder from the heavens, the raw enthusiasm of the 5,000 screaming spectators erupted like a volcano. The crowd was a melting pot of madness: pompous nobles with more money than sense, fat-cat merchants betting their fortunes, desperate working stiffs gambling away their grocery money hoping to strike it rich, and even proper young ladies who should have been home practicing their embroidery but instead were hollering like banshees and frothing at the mouth with bloodlust.

"THRALL! THRALL! THRALL! KILL! KILL! KILL!"

"You better win, you green beast! I've bet my entire month's wages on your ugly hide!"

"RIP HIS HEAD OFF AND FEED IT TO THE CROWS!"

With the bone-chilling sound of massive iron chains grinding and twisting like the gates of hell themselves, a young but absolutely jacked orc warrior emerged from the pitch-black dungeon depths. In his massive green hands, he gripped a crude stone battle axe that looked like it could split a mountain in half. Before him stretched the arena floor—a carpet of black earth so thoroughly soaked with blood and gore that it had become something beyond soil, beyond mud, beyond anything natural. It was death incarnate, compressed into dirt.

The bloodstains that had crystallized into this unholy mixture had been accumulating for years. There was blood from his enemies—orcs, humans, trolls, and things that defied description. There was blood from his fellow gladiators who had fallen beside him. And yes, there was his own blood too, spilled countless times but never enough to keep him down.

He couldn't give two hoots about the deafening cheers of the human rabble or the nauseating stench of death that permeated every grain of sand beneath his feet.

Thrall flared his nostrils like a bull seeing red and locked his predatory gaze on the opposite side of the arena.

The announcer's voice crackled to life again, dripping with theatrical menace: "And his opponent today, dear bloodthirsty patrons, is a nightmarish creature from the frozen peaks of Alterac Mountains—something so savage, so utterly merciless, that it makes our beloved Thrall look like a fluffy bunny rabbit! Can you guess what unholy terror awaits!?"

"AHHHHHHHHHH——" The crowd's anticipation reached fever pitch as an enormous cage, big enough to house a dragon, was hauled up by groaning winches and iron chains thick as tree trunks, positioning itself at the arena's opposite entrance.

The colossal beast trapped inside hadn't even shown itself yet, but the thunderous impacts of its fury against the cage walls were already driving it into an absolute frenzy of rage.

"BANG——"

"BANG-BANG-BANG-CRASH!"

The titanic creature was going absolutely ape-shit, slamming its massive bulk against iron bars as thick as a man's torso with enough force to shake the entire arena.

"HOLY MOTHER OF—!" Just as the announcer had hoped, waves of shocked gasps and terrified screams rippled through the audience like wildfire.

Young maidens shrieked and swooned, wealthy merchants roared with maniacal glee, and more than a few spectators found themselves hyperventilating from pure terror and excitement.

"Can you guess what monstrosity lurks behind those bars!?" After milking the suspense for every drop of drama, the announcer finally unleashed his bombshell: "The incomparably devastating Thrall faces off against the legendary YETI KING OF DAGGERSPINE RIDGE!"

The crowd's response was absolutely nuclear.

To any sane observer, this wasn't even a fair fight anymore—it was like watching David face Goliath, except David was already pretty damn tough to begin with. The terrifying Yeti King towered a full sixteen feet tall, making the "merely" seven-foot-tall orc warrior look like a child facing down a rampaging giant.

But the arena organizers were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Thrall had become too damn good at what he did. Over the past three brutal years, he had systematically slaughtered every opponent they threw at him. Among fighters in his weight class, there simply wasn't an enemy left alive that Thrall couldn't reduce to hamburger meat within minutes.

Thrall 's winning streak had become a serious problem for the betting houses. Even with odds stacked at 10-to-11 against him, your average joe could still make easy money just by blindly throwing their coins on Thrall to win. It was like betting on the sun to rise—a sure thing.

This situation was eating into the organizers' profits like a cancer, but Thrall had become such a crowd favorite that assassinating him quietly wasn't an option.

Today marked Thrall's final performance in Brill. If he somehow survived this encounter, he'd be shipped off to Lordaeron City to face even deadlier opponents in the capital's premier blood-soaked colosseum. Rumor had it that the main arena in Lordaeron featured actual demons as gladiators—creatures from the deepest pits of hell itself.

However, Thrall's owner, the scheming Viscount Naris, was about to have his dreams of easy money crushed like a bug under a boot.

Facing the mountain-sized Yeti King that looked like it could bench-press a castle, Thrall remained cooler than a cucumber in a snowstorm.

The moment the Yeti King charged forward like a runaway freight train, Thrall activated his signature Charge ability, transforming himself into a green blur of pure violence. He rocketed toward the beast's massive shoulder faster than you could say "Jack Robinson," then immediately followed up with a Thunder Strike that hit with the force of an actual lightning bolt, stunning the creature senseless. Without missing a beat, he chained into a devastating Whirlwind Slash that left the Yeti King stumbling around blind as a bat.

As the massive beast flailed helplessly in its confusion, Thrall executed a graceful leap that would make an Olympic gymnast weep with envy, sailing through the air like a deadly green ballet dancer. He landed behind the staggering Yeti King and, with surgical precision, brought his battle axe down on the creature's neck vertebrae with enough force to split granite.

The Yeti King's head went flying through the air like a gruesome cannonball, trailing blood and gore.

DECAPITATION! FATALITY! FLAWLESS VICTORY!

"LOKTAR OGAR!" Thrall roared in his native orcish tongue, words that no human in the audience could understand but whose meaning was crystal clear: total, absolute, undeniable dominance.

Later, Thrall trudged back to his cramped, damp cellar that served as both his prison and his home. The moment his massive frame settled onto his pathetic straw mattress, a deep, gravelly voice speaking perfect orcish drifted through the stone wall from the adjacent cell: "Another masterful performance, Go'el. You continue to exceed all expectations."

What none of the humans suspected was that in the deepest, most secure level of Thrall 's underground prison, there existed a secret passage hidden just beyond the wall of his cell. If he ever chose to, Go'el could smash through that barrier and escape this nightmare whenever he pleased.

"That overgrown snowball was barely enough to get my blood pumping. Don't these humans have any creativity left in their tiny brains?"

"Go'el, never underestimate the cunning of humans. You'd be surprised how many absolute monsters walk among them disguised as ordinary men."

Go'el had long since stopped caring about his birth name, but he pressed his mysterious neighbor for more intelligence: "How many humans can match your level of power, Orgrim?"

Orgrim? The legendary Orgrim Doomhammer himself?

Times had certainly taken a wild turn. According to every official record in Lordaeron's archives, Orgrim Doomhammer had died of illness while rotting in a prison cell beneath Lordaeron City. Yet here he was, very much alive, whispering secrets through stone walls to a young orc who the world knew only as a gladiator named Thrall.

"If you're talking about pure melee combat specialists, I can think of at least three who could give even me a run for my money."

"Let me guess—Anduin Lothar, Uther the Lightbringer, and Saidan Dathrohan? Are these the dangerous humans I need to keep an eye on?" Go'el's brow furrowed with concentration. "Besides the various kings, are they the only ones worth worrying about?"

"Not even close, young one. What I'm about to tell you will shake you to your very core. Compared to the man I'm thinking of, those kings and even those three legendary warriors are nothing more than children playing with wooden swords. There is one human—just one—who has earned titles that should make every orc's blood run cold: 'The Orc's Bane' and 'The Horde's Eternal Nemesis.' I want you to burn this name into your memory, carve it into your soul, because this man—this absolute weapon of mass destruction—is single-handedly responsible for the Horde's catastrophic defeats in all the wars!"

When Go'el heard this ominous buildup, every muscle in his powerful frame tensed like a coiled spring, and his breathing became so shallow you could barely detect it.

Orgrim's voice dropped to barely above a whisper: "His name... is Edmund Duke!"

At that exact moment, hundreds of miles away near a remote farming village on the continent of Lordaeron, the very heavens themselves seemed to tear apart with supernatural fury.

The sky erupted into chaos—lightning bolts the size of ancient trees crashed down like the wrath of angry gods, thunder boomed with enough force to shatter windows for miles around, and hurricane-force winds howled like the screams of a thousand banshees.

Countless purple-blue lightning strikes converged with impossible precision, their raw elemental power carving out a perfect circle on the ground that was so geometrically flawless it looked like it had been drawn by divine mathematicians using celestial instruments.

Everything outside this mystical circle was instantly transformed into charcoal—the lush green grass, the rich brown soil, even the rocks themselves—all reduced to blackened ash and cinder.

But in the very center of this supernatural phenomenon, there appeared something completely unexpected: a stark naked young man, positioned exactly like Rodin's famous "Thinker" statue, though his physique was more "scrawny scholar" than "Greek god."

His face had that special quality that just made you want to punch it on sight.

"Who... am I?"

"Where the hell did I come from?"

"And where in God's green earth am I supposed to go now?"