CHAPTER 730: STRATHOLME

Although it was not comparable to its original, lake-sized scale, the small pool of pure Sunwell water that had accumulated at the bottom of the well—even if it was just a tiny amount, barely enough for a few people to bathe—undoubtedly signaled Duke’s success! A human who, with his selfless spirit, had saved the glory of the High Elves.

"Duke—" Completely unable to control herself, Sylvanas excitedly picked up the slightly weakened Duke and kissed him. Her slender, strong, and elastic arms wrapped around his neck, while her other hand supported his chin, kissing him incessantly like a chick pecking at rice. Well, if the active party were a man, there would be nothing amiss. Unfortunately, it was Sylvanas who had initiated it!

Sweet kisses rained down on Duke, who was utterly dazed. What was worse, due to some unspeakable reason, 90% of his body was paralyzed.

It didn’t feel bad, but Duke... he felt so sad that his manly integrity had been lost, and he was almost in tears.

Kael’thas smiled faintly; Halduron kept grinning; Lor’themar held his forehead with a frown; Jaina Goldsword suddenly thought of King Daelin; Liadrin seemed to be in a dilemma; Lirath opened her mouth and murmured something like "The eldest brother-in-law, the second brother-in-law, and the third brother-in-law are all Duke?" and so on.

After a while, Sylvanas suddenly realized... that she seemed to have been a little too enthusiastic. She let out a startled scream of "Ah—", then vanished from the elves’ sight after a few swift take-offs and landings.

Poor Duke fell flat on his face, and it took him a while to regain his senses. Unfortunately, his mind was still spinning, and in the end, it was his maid Vanessa, who sometimes engaged in mischievous acts, who rushed over and hugged him.

"Duke, are you okay?" Vanessa asked.

"Sir Edmund, what’s wrong with you?" Lor’themar asked nervously.

Well, Sylvanas, who had peeked back from somewhere, also sent a nervous voice on the wind: "I forgot to ask you, are you okay?"

Duke smiled bitterly: "It’s okay, it’s just that operating such a complex and difficult magic circle consumes too much of my physical and mental energy."

This statement was actually an outright lie. Duke looked inside himself and saw that his body was like a vast universe. Thick magic circuits resembled rivers in the sky, and the magic nodes formed by the intersection of each circuit were like stars, shining brightly. And between his eyebrows was the Earth, as imagined by Duke, the Lord of All Stars! He envisioned using the Earth to control the solar system, the solar system to control the entire Milky Way, and the Milky Way to control the entire universe.

Of course, the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe is a pure delusion of the ancients. But who says Duke is an Earthling? So unconsciously, Duke, the idealist, directly regarded the Earth as the ultimate authority. He used one to control ten, and ten to control a hundred. He kept expanding and eventually ruled everything in the universe within his body. Until this point, Duke would never have been able to imagine that by using human spirit and soul, it was possible to create such a complex, even previously unimaginable, super magic circuit system within the small space of the human body.

"Sure enough, the mysteries of the human body cannot be fully explored even if one spends a lifetime. The human body is a huge treasure house! The soul is a treasure house within a treasure house! The most dazzling jewel in the crown—" Duke was still amazed.

On the other hand, Duke couldn’t help laughing in his heart as he watched the system AI’s evaluation of him as a ’fifth-class Starry Sun Mage’.

Right! That’s right! Until this moment, Duke had truly stepped into the threshold of the Sunshine Mage, and rushed from the sixth-magic star to the fifth-magic star in one go. There’s no way. If an ordinary wizard obtained Antonidas’s magic circuits, he might be eager for promotion. Duke couldn’t do that. When he inclusively opened the three major magic circuits of frost, fire, and arcane at once, he knew that for something like promotion, he would need at least three times as many magic circuits as a single-element mage!

In fact, after calculations by the system elves, to perfectly upgrade the three evolved magic circuits that were originally in the Wyrmrest Temple, the total amount of magic power required was not three times, but three times the power of three. What is three times three, times three? You read that right! That’s 27 times more insane! The magic circuit provided by Antonidas only reached three times the standard, which was far from enough! Therefore, the previous Duke, although he possessed the extremely powerful aura of the Great Wizard Antonidas, was still a Hui Yue level at his core.

But now everything was different. Blowing up the Sunwell certainly caused an astronomical amount of mana to evaporate and dissociate into the air due to the explosion, but Duke, as the main controller, reaped the greatest benefit. Duke used the explosion as a cover for the remaining pure Sunwell water, compressing 90% of it into his body, all of which was used to build his magic circuit. In such a short period of time, Duke’s magic circuit expanded by more than a hundred times! It was just that Duke had used all his magic power to build the magic circuits in his body, which gave others the feeling that Duke’s body was "hollowed out."

Many elves were grateful to a super thief who had almost taken away the entire Sunwell. Perhaps, Duke was truly taking advantage of the situation? Even the "movie star" Duke had to hold back for a long time and not burst out laughing at this scene. Of course, without Duke’s help in removing the pollutants, the Sunwell would have exploded anyway.

Duke panted, "The Sunwell is now purified. Unfortunately, it has suffered too much damage and cannot be used for the time being. However, as long as it is well preserved, it should be able to recover one-tenth of its original energy in a hundred years."

"Thank you! Sir Edmund!"

"Long live Lord Edmund!"

"Praise you—you are our Sin’dorei’s eternal brother!"

The elves cheered loudly. In the eyes of Blood Elves, whose lifespans could easily reach several thousand years, it was good enough as long as they could maintain hope. What did a mere hundred years matter? Every elf was clapping loudly, their handsome and beautiful faces glowing red and filled with smiles.

The ’weak’ Duke waved his hands as he left the Sunwell with the help of Vanessa and Sylvanas, who had run out again. After leaving Sunwell Plateau, Duke suddenly saw Abendis pacing back and forth anxiously at the gate of Sunwell Plateau. Seeing Duke emerge, Abendis was happy at first, then he was stunned, a lingering sadness on his face. Duke even saw the muscles on Abendis’ cheeks twitching slightly.

"What’s wrong? Just tell me what’s going on. Although I can’t fight for the time being, I’m still the commander-in-chief of the Alliance."

Abendis gritted his teeth and said, "Stratholme is under siege!"