Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 609: When Magic Goes Nuclear

Karazhan isn't just magical—it's the magical equivalent of a fortress built on a powder keg.

This mind-bending wizard tower, perched precariously on a space rift like a house of cards in a hurricane, boasts spatial protection that would make most other mage towers green with envy. Thanks to its prime real estate on the edge of reality itself, this architectural marvel could shrug off attacks that would turn lesser towers into expensive rubble.

Alleria decided to test the tower's legendary defenses herself. She nocked an arrow and let it fly straight at the wide-open doorway from the platform. The entrance gaped like a barn door, but her arrow bounced off thin air like it had hit an invisible brick wall.

The reason? Simple as pie—while the inner sanctum and the platform looked connected enough to shake hands, they were actually in completely different dimensions. It was like trying to punch someone through a funhouse mirror.

Even in a mystical fortress like Karazhan, when that door slammed shut, the spatial shockwave hit harder than a freight train loaded with hammers.

The laws of space twisted like a pretzel, obliterating most of the terrace faster than you could say "timber." Duke's internal system painted a crystal-clear three-dimensional picture of Karazhan's current predicament, and it wasn't pretty.

On his mental display, Duke watched in fascination and horror as a granite boulder—weighing more than a small mountain—got picked up by some invisible cosmic giant and started floating around like a feather in a tornado. The massive stone didn't crack, didn't crumble, didn't even chip—it just got swallowed by the void like it had never existed in the first place.

No earth-shattering kaboom, no thunderous explosion—just reality itself getting sucked down a cosmic drain like water going down a bathtub.

"Teleport!" For your average wizard, trying to teleport through unstable space is like playing Russian roulette with all six chambers loaded.

But Duke wasn't your average wizard. Using his system's calculations to thread the needle through the eye of a hurricane, he grabbed the one stable millisecond in a thousand and teleported himself and his whole crew straight to the mage tower's penthouse suite.

The maneuver was so slick that even Alexstrasza, the Red Dragon Queen herself, had to give Duke a double-take of grudging respect.

Even Alleria, who'd seen more action than a war correspondent, felt her knees knock together: "Sweet mother of pearl! What in the blazes just happened? Can this place take much more of a beating?"

Duke's jaw was clenched tighter than a miser's purse strings: "We'll live. At worst, we'll only lose about a third of Karazhan to this cosmic temper tantrum."

Duke's expression was darker than a moonless night in a coal mine.

If Ner'zhul hadn't gotten the boot back through the Dark Portal just moments before, the entire tower would've been blown to kingdom come faster than you could blink.

Damn that scheming snake Kil'jaeden! That devil was slicker than oil on water!

The Skull of Gul'dan was basically a magical nuke wrapped in a pretty package—providing endless dark mojo during peacetime but ready to go off like the Fourth of July when push came to shove. In the original timeline, this cursed relic had worked hand-in-hand with the Dark Portal to turn the entire planet of Draenor into cosmic confetti.

Now it was being used as a weapons-grade explosive to turn Karazhan into the world's most expensive fireworks display.

Duke could see the writing on the wall clear as day. Karazhan wasn't just some fancy wizard tower—it was a critical load-bearing beam in Azeroth's spatial framework. The whole planet's magical defenses were one massive spell circle crafted by the Titans themselves, designed to supercharge the guardian dragons and give them home-field advantage.

If they knocked out Karazhan—one of the key junction boxes in this cosmic circuit—the whole system would start falling apart like a house built on sand. And if the Burning Legion could take out Alexstrasza, one of the guardian dragons, in the same stroke? Well, that would be like winning the lottery and finding a twenty-dollar bill in an old coat pocket on the same day.

"That backstabbing son of a gun Kil'jaeden actually saw through my play and knew I'd bring Alexstrasza into this mess!" Duke was shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm.

Played like a fiddle! Caught completely off guard!

This was the first time Duke had been thoroughly bamboozled since he'd set foot in Azeroth, and it stung worse than salt in a fresh wound.

Duke, who'd been riding high on his knowledge of future events like he held all the aces, had finally met his match in Kil'jaeden—one of the Burning Legion's head honchos and a master puppeteer who could teach Machiavelli a thing or two.

Duke had considered this possibility, sure as shooting, but as his butterfly effect started changing the course of history, more and more variables were slipping through his fingers like sand.

This disaster was exhibit A of how badly things could go sideways.

Originally, Kil'jaeden was supposed to show up fashionably late—after Ner'zhul got his comeuppance—to collect the orc's soul like some cosmic repo man. But Duke had gone and crippled Kazzak and given Kil'jaeden's two sultry lieutenants a reality check that probably sent them running back to daddy with hurt feelings and bruised egos.

The result? Kil'jaeden decided to handle this mess personally, rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty.

"Looks like we've been played for!" Alexstrasza let out a sigh that could've powered a windmill.

"You can say that again!" Duke's face had gone whiter than fresh snow.

The Dragon Queen gave Duke's shoulder a reassuring pat that could've knocked over a lesser man: "Don't beat yourself up over this, kid. You've done better than anyone had a right to expect. Even I didn't see this curveball coming. If you hadn't pulled off that impossible teleport, I'd be nursing wounds that would make a troll's healing factor look like a band-aid."

When the Queen put it like that, everyone within earshot felt their blood turn to ice water.

Just imagine it—an explosion so catastrophically powerful that its shockwaves could be felt across multiple dimensions. What mere mortal could survive getting caught in the crossfire of something that apocalyptic?

Luckily she was THE walking healing factor.

The Queen kept laying down wisdom: "Kid, what you've accomplished at your age is nothing short of miraculous. Don't go expecting miracles to fall out of the sky like raindrops just because you've been on a hot streak. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place."

Duke's white-knuckled fists finally relaxed: "Message received, loud and clear."

"Speaking of messages, what's the situation report from the rest of the world?" Vereesa asked with the enthusiasm of someone requesting their own death sentence.

Duke ran a quick diagnostic through his system, but the results were about as encouraging as a doctor's frown: "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the spatial interference is thicker than molasses. We're flying blind until this cosmic storm blows over. However, since that explosion originated from Draenor's Dark Portal, and we were connected at the hip when all hell broke loose, I'm afraid that over there..."

Draenor was about to go out with a bang bigger than the finale of a fireworks show, just like it did in the history books!

Duke had called it right on the money.

Since Ner'zhul had rigged up his magical emergency exit at Draenor's Dark Portal, when the Skull of Gul'dan went off like a cosmic cherry bomb, the portal on the other side took the brunt of the blast like a quarterback getting sacked by the entire defensive line.

The orcs who'd been camping around the Dark Portal on Ner'zhul's orders found themselves staring down the barrel of their worst nightmare.

Most of the poor green-skinned bastards didn't even have time to process what hit them before the cosmic freight train ran them over.

In the blink of an eye, the normally docile Dark Portal started throwing a tantrum that would make a tornado look like a gentle breeze. The black light it belched out swallowed every other color in creation, leaving the orcs blind as bats in a cave.

All they could make out were the bone-chilling howls of wargs and the death screams of their brothers-in-arms, but not a single orc had the foggiest idea what fresh hell was being unleashed.

The horrifying symphony was quickly drowned out by a rumbling that sounded like the world's angriest god clearing his throat. Before any of them could wrap their thick skulls around what was happening, a deafening crash sent every orc tumbling like bowling pins in an earthquake.

The unlucky ones got their lights punched out immediately—mercy in disguise, as it turned out.

For those still conscious enough to appreciate their predicament, this was where the real nightmare began. As they gasped for air like fish out of water, the darkness lifted like a curtain, and they immediately looked toward where the Dark Portal used to stand. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

It was gone. Vanished. Kaput.

The towering guardian statues that had watched over the portal like stone sentinels were now nothing more than a pile of rocks that wouldn't be recognizable to their own mothers. The three colossal pillars that had formed the portal's frame—pillars that had witnessed the Horde's greatest triumphs and most crushing defeats—had been reduced to rubble that wouldn't impress a construction worker.

Not a trace of Azeroth remained. The connection had been severed cleaner than a butcher's cut.

The next heartbeat brought hell on earth, as flames erupted across the landscape faster than gossip in a small town. The inferno spread like wildfire with a tailwind, but that was just the appetizer. The ground itself started coming apart at the seams, and the shockwave hit the terrain like God's own sledgehammer, turning solid earth into rolling waves of destruction that crashed over each other in endless, crushing layers.

Every orc within spitting distance of the Dark Portal got swallowed whole by this world-ending explosion, becoming footnotes in the final Chapter of Draenor's story...