Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 617: Oh hell naw!

This was a godforsaken hellscape that had just been French-kissed by Death himself and left gasping for more.

This was a nightmare carnival where corpses were stacked like cordwood at a lumberjack convention, creating a grotesque buffet that would make vultures weep with joy.

However, in this twisted theater of the damned, the guards discovered something that shook them to their very core: their untouchable goddess had just face-planted into mortality like a drunk tavern wench falling off her barstool for the very first time.

Ten years ago, in Alterac—a city that war had chewed up and spat out like a piece of rotten meat—where even the king had been reduced to less than dogshit and all the land had been carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, when they had lost their parents, their loved ones, and any place to hide from the merciless storms of fate and were about to croak like flies in the gutter, it was this holy maiden who descended like a freaking angel from heaven to save their worthless hides and shattered souls.

She gave them food when they were gnawing on their own boots.

She gave them warmth when they were colder than a witch's heart in a blizzard.

She gave them life and a future when they had less hope than a snowball's chance in hell. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

This wasn't some bleeding-heart charity case—they'd have to pay the piper eventually, and they knew it.

They were more than willing to sell their souls because without the present, the future was about as useful as tits on a bull.

They silently swallowed the most ball-busting training imaginable and endured suffering that would make grown men cry like babies, all for the sake of protecting this woman who was barely older than them but had yanked them from Death's gaping maw.

In their hearts, this noble lady was their living, breathing goddess—untouchable as the morning star.

They watched her rule over this massive territory like a queen bee, leading the people to breathe life back into land that war had turned into a smoking crater, but they had never—not once in ten damn years—seen her face light up with a genuine smile for any man breathing.

Countless nobles had thrown themselves at her feet like lovesick puppies, and even Prince Varian had once tried to court her with all the subtlety of a charging bull, but every last one of them got shot down faster than a clay pigeon at a shooting gallery.

When faced with any man's romantic advances, she transformed into the most unapproachable ice queen this side of the frozen throne—colder than a penguin's ass in Antarctica.

And that was just fine by them.

It seemed like such an extraordinary woman should never belong to any ordinary mortal—she was too good for this world, too pure for any man's grubby hands.

The young guards stood at attention with the devotion of monks worshipping at the altar of perfection, their eyes burning with hopeless longing.

Ten years of this sacred dance.

She had never had so much as a whisper of scandal attached to her name.

She was obviously a mage who could fry enemies like bacon, but she looked more saintly than any hymn-singing priestess of the Holy Light who ever walked this cursed earth.

And then—like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky—she suddenly hurled herself at the man in rough linen clothes standing before her and wrapped him in an embrace that would make a bear jealous, holding nothing back.

There was a moment of intimate closeness that made the air itself blush.

The guards stood there like statues, their jaws hitting the dirt, unable to believe their sacred goddess had fallen head-over-heels for some hero who'd saved her bacon.

Duke, who was pinned underneath this surprise attack, was getting squeezed tighter than a tick on a hound dog.

The overwhelming tsunami of affection from his attacker left him drunk with joy and embarrassed as hell at the same time.

She showed no signs of letting up, so Duke had to tap her on the back a few times like he was surrendering in a wrestling match.

No response whatsoever!

She either didn't feel it or was playing possum.

The assault continued with ruthless determination.

The beauty was laying siege to his defenses like a general storming a castle.

Duke had to fake a coughing fit that sounded like he was dying of consumption.

She finally pulled back with the reluctance of a child leaving a candy store, and when she saw the drool marks on Duke's shirt across his chest, both of them turned redder than a pair of ripe tomatoes.

"Sweet mother of pearl! You don't have to go at it like a rabid wolf, Ilucia!" Duke looked as flustered as a cat in a dog show.

That's right, folks!

This noble lady was none other than the infamous Miss Ilucia Barov herself.

"What the hell are you talking about? I should be the one saying that, you magnificent bastard! You've been gone for ten goddamn years!" Ilucia's face was twisted with the kind of resentment that could curdle milk.

"Kil'jaeden secretly slipped Ner'zhul a bomb that could blow up half the continent—the damn thing even turned Karazhan into a smoking crater!" Duke protested with all the innocence of a choir boy.

"I know it's not your fault, you beautiful idiot!" Ilucia's silky black hair cascaded over Duke's face like a midnight waterfall, making him itch something fierce. At this point, her voice dropped to a whisper so quiet it would make a mouse sound like a roaring lion: "You promised to give me a coming-of-age ceremony that would knock my socks off, but you were ten years late! That's still a cold, hard fact!"

Duke was struck speechless as a mute parrot.

Having taken the offensive, Ilucia felt so mortified she was ready to burst into flames. Her gorgeous face and neck were burning redder than a lobster in boiling water. She stood up and spun around with the grace of a dancer, wanting Duke to get an eyeful of what he'd been missing.

She had grown up, by God!

The once innocent little lamb had blossomed into a full-grown woman who could stop traffic.

It was obvious that Ilucia had been hitting the training harder than a blacksmith hits an anvil, but her body wasn't built like your typical bookworm mage—she was carved like a warrior goddess.

And because Ilucia had been blessed with eternal life, her body would forever be locked at the peak of youth and beauty...

Duke's throat went drier than the Barrens in summer.

Meanwhile, Varian and Jaina, who were standing nearby like a couple of gawking tourists, were more confused than a blind man in a maze.

Varian: "That... appears to be Marquis Ilucia Barov of Stormwind, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me?"

"What a knockout! How in the seven hells did she end up with Duke? Holy Light preserve us! They're an item!?" Jaina covered her face with both hands, knowing her cheeks were burning like forge fires.

Women went weak in the knees for heroes.

Here was a scene straight out of every romance novel ever written: a dashing hero rescues a stunning damsel, and then she falls for him harder than a sack of hammers!

The corner of Varian's mouth twitched like he'd bitten into something sour. He was about as thrilled as a man facing the gallows, but what could he do? With hordes of zombies shambling around like a plague of locusts, it was backbreaking work just standing there and chopping them down. Meanwhile, mages could just toss around fireballs like they were throwing confetti and call it a day.

He'd built mages up in his mind to be unstoppable forces of nature. The only one who lived up to that reputation was Duke, and that was a half-crippled Duke at that—which made it even more galling.

On the flip side, although Duke was thrilled beyond words that Ilucia still carried a torch for him and had waited ten long years, and was moved deeper than a philosopher's thoughts by this devotion, he hadn't forgotten that they were in more danger than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

"Let's put this heart-to-heart on ice for now—we've got all the time in the world later."

Hearing the phrase "all the time in the world," Ilucia's face turned even redder than before.

"Ilucia, lay it on me straight: what in the blazes happened here? When did these walking corpses start their little parade? What's the current clusterfuck situation in the various kingdoms?" Duke fired off questions faster than a crossbow bolt.

Ilucia straightened up quicker than a soldier at attention and swept her raven hair back into place. In the span of three heartbeats, she had transformed back into the iron-willed woman who had taken Duke's place running the Edmund family empire.

"The undead apocalypse kicked off last July, and at first it was just a few isolated cases scattered here and there. Lordaeron came out swinging, claiming this whole nightmare was the result of Dalaran's forbidden experiments gone wrong. After all, small undead critters like rabbits started popping up near Dalaran ten years ago, even though they swore up and down they'd been wiped out completely."

Damn it all to hell—this had Kel'Thuzad's stench all over it.

Ilucia pressed on: "I've been following your orders to the letter, keeping my ear to the ground about the situation here. Southshore is also one of our trump cards that we left in play. I came here this time to deal with the orc problem that's been brewing like a storm. There's solid evidence that the orc slaves are planning to raise hell with a full-scale revolt."

Duke was hit like a bolt from the blue. What a royal mess! The Scourge was gearing up to unleash hell on earth, so why were the orcs picking this moment to start their slave rebellion?

Well, when you really thought about it, didn't this mean that Thrall was about to make his grand entrance onto the stage?

"The Scarlet Crusade got called up for special duty. If it weren't for this major catastrophe brewing, Terenas would never want Lordaeron's prize fighting force to leave the capital at the exact moment when the prince was returning home in triumph."

Hold on just a damn minute!

Duke suddenly felt a chill run down his spine like ice water—he had the sinking feeling that everything was about to go straight to hell in a handbasket!