Chapter 652
Chapter 652: Corruption of Argus
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The total population of the eredar on Argus was not much. There were about 300 million people on the entire planet. The eredar were long-lived, so their low reproductive ability was unavoidable. Their small population was due to their highly developed civilization and technology.
Therefore, the fel energy transformation ritual of the eredar didn’t take too long. It was basically finished in half a year.
Sargeras fulfilled his promise to the eredar. He bestowed them with the power and knowledge of fel energy, and the eredar demons officially became the first intelligent race to join the Burning Legion. And because the eredar still had powerful potential after transforming into demons, they could master and deepen the power of fel energy very rapidly. In addition, Sargeras favored them, so the eredar demons quickly replaced the other demons and became the backbone of the Burning Legion. The status of the eredar demons in the Legion was even higher than that of the dreadlords.
The eredar were quite receptive to their transformation into demons. In fact, a long time ago, the eredar wizards had been trying to summon demons from the Void. This race was obsessed with unknown powers and mysteries, and now, they had gotten their wish.
Regarding the management of the eredar demons, Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were mainly responsible for it. Roy didn’t intervene, and it was useless to intervene because the eredar demons felt that he was a non-eredar demon, so they would comply on the surface but disobey in secret.
After integrating the eredar demons, Kil’jaeden couldn’t wait to express himself to Sargeras. His first combat request to Sargeras was to hunt down Velen and the traitors!
it couldn’t be helped. When Velen escaped with his people, he had schemed against Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, directly knocking them out. When Kil’jaeden woke up and discovered this fact, he was so angry that he wanted to vomit blood. It was too humiliating!
The humiliation Velen had inflicted on him, his anger at the betrayal of his compatriots, and his inflated ego after obtaining power caused Kil’jaeden to make the decision to hunt down Velen. Roy knew that Kil’jaeden had indeed done it. He had hunted down Velen for thousands of years. Every time Velen and the group of exiles who called themselves the draenei fled and landed on a planet, Kil’jaeden would lead the Burning Legion to chase after them, forcing them to flee again.
Sargeras agreed to Kil’jaeden’s request without even thinking about it and let him do it himself. After receiving Sargeras’s support, Kil’jaeden even deliberately looked at Roy before leaving.
Roy saw the smugness hidden in his eyes and found it a little funny. Of course, he knew that Kil’jaeden wanted to fight for power. He also knew that even though he had been the commander of the Legion since the formation of the Legion, he was destined not to be able to compete for power with Archimonde and Kil’jaeden due to the existence of the time flux. He would disappear for a long time periodically. Under such circumstances, how could the authority of a commander of the Legion fall on him?
Since Roy didn’t have this intention, he felt that Kil’jaeden’s behavior in front of Sargeras was ridiculous.
However, Roy was one of the commanders of the Legion after all. Even though he didn’t intend to fight for power, he couldn’t let Kil’jaeden look down on him, so he felt that it was necessary to find an opportunity to let Kil’jaeden and Archimonde recognize reality…
With the transformation of all the eredar into demons, the main force of the Burning Legion gradually moved to this planet. Sargeras had been acting mysterious recently and often disappeared, only to reappear after a long time. Roy didn’t know what he was doing, but he noticed a special phenomenon. Every time Sargeras disappeared, a few dreadlords in the Legion would also disappear.
Roy immediately realized that the force behind the dreadlords seemed to want to do something during this time.
Sure enough, Sargeras returned three years after taking control of Argus. As soon as he returned, he summoned Roy, Archimonde, and Kil’jaeden and got them to prepare. He planned to start corrupting Argus’s world-soul.
Sargeras had already told Roy about his decision to corrupt Argus’s world-soul. But what was different was that not only did he want to corrupt the world-soul, but he even wanted to use the power of Argus’s world-soul to turn Argus into the Burning Legion’s strongest fortress and forward base.
After three thousand years of the crusade, the Burning Legion had actually advanced very far. The crusade had started at the edge of the Twisting Nether, but it had already advanced to the material world. The entire frontline of the Legion stretched very far, causing a huge problem. The Twisting Nether demons in the Legion returned to the Twisting Nether to resurrect after dying in battle, and the time required to return to the Legion was becoming longer and longer.
The combat strength of the Burning Legion was inseparable from the large number of demons. If the resurrection process took too long, it would cause the Legion to lose combat effectiveness. Sargeras wanted to make up for this now.
Roy was certain that Sargeras had not thought of this before, but he didn’t know what kind of lobbying the dreadlords had done and what kind of existence they had introduced to Sargeras, causing him to make this decision.
But he had to admit that this plan was indeed very beneficial to the Burning Legion.
In particular, what was worth mentioning was that Sargeras’s plan was also extremely important to the newly-joined eredar demons. After all, the eredar demons had been transformed by the fel energy ritual and were not native demons of the Twisting Nether. In other words, after the eredar demons died in battle, they couldn’t resurrect in the Twisting Nether. Every death meant one less. If Sargeras could corrupt the Argus world-soul and bind the souls of all the eredar demons to this planet, then after they died in battle, they could resurrect here with the help of the energy of the Argus world-soul.
Archimonde and Kil’jaeden naturally couldn’t reject such a good matter. Even though Argus was the planet that gave birth to the eredar, they had now become demons, so they didn’t feel any psychological burden selling it out.
Only Sargeras could corrupt Argus. No one else could do it. So not long after, Roy, Julia, Benia, and the other Burning Legion demons witnessed a scene that could be engraved into history.
Sargeras appeared in the sky above Argus in the form of the Dark Titan. He stretched out his demon claws the size of mountains and dug a gigantic fissure on the surface of the planet! This extremely rough action brought about a devastating apocalyptic scene to the planet. Countless fragments of Argus were lifted up, entered space, merged into Argus’s orbit, and started orbiting around the planet.
After digging out this gigantic fissure, Sargeras transformed into his world-soul form. It was an enormous humanoid astral body, and his entire body sank through the fissure into the core of Argus!
Argus’s world-soul was in a deep slumber and had not yet fully awakened to become a titan. Naturally, this world-soul was sleeping in the core of the planet. Sargeras used this rough method to hug his little brother Argus and then used all his fel energy to corrode him.
This world-shaking action made all the eredar demons see the terrifying power of the Dark Titan. Regarding this powerful force that could destroy planets, the eredar demons expressed that they were lucky to have chosen the right side…
The process of corrupting Argus was very long, and it would take years or even decades. But during this time, the ecology of Argus was constantly changing with the corrosion. The original Argus was once a fertile planet full of crystalline mountains that shone with light. It had huge oceans, deserts, forests, lush grasslands, and icy tundras. But the natural ecology gradually changed as Argus was corrupted.
The ground began to permeate with the aura of decay and loss. The sharp crystal ridges were full of corrupting energy that caused them to fall apart. The crystalline mountains were corroded, riddled with holes, and shattered. There were strange dark lights reflected from the crystal dust storms everywhere, roaring as they corroded valleys into barren land. The dust demons born from the crystal dust wailed in the valleys made of shining sharp rocks. The climate that was once suitable for life began to turn cold, and the ruthless cold winds began to sweep violently on the ground. As the corrosion continued to deepen, powerful fel energy gradually reached the core through the cracks in the ground, and this fel energy began to give birth to inferior demon races.
The beautiful and charming purple aurora of Argus had disappeared. Viewed from outer space, the entire planet slowly turned into a planet full of dark green light.
During the time that Sargeras was corroding Argus, Archimonde and Kil’jaeden established countless weapon factories and starship manufacturing ports on the planet. They arranged the Legion’s headquarters in Antorus and set up the throne of Sargeras, the Burning Throne, here. As expected, this planet was transformed step by step into the Burning Legion’s most important forward base and barrier, and the number of demons on this planet gradually reached its peak.
During this time, Roy didn’t have much to do. He had already vaguely sensed that the node at which he jumped might be the moment Argus the Unmaker was born. So he had no intention of intervening in the Legion’s headquarters construction plan and was only busy with his soul collection plan.
After Argus became the headquarters of the Burning Legion, the nearby planets suffered. There were two other planets with life in the star cluster where Argus was. The boorish Archimonde rushed over with the Legion, and Roy also reaped many benefits.
Roy had also asked Tichondrius about his weapon, Frostmourne. But Tichondrius said, “Because of some small problems, Lord Osiris, you can’t take Frostmourne back for the time being.”
Roy had already expected this outcome. He knew very well that this sword would only reappear in front of him when Ner’zhul became the Lich King… The Shadowlands were planning to use his weapon.
However, although he didn’t get his weapon back, in his conversation with Tichondrius, Tichondrius vaguely mentioned his situation. He said that his true master was not Sargeras, and the force he was truly loyal to hoped to reach a cooperative relationship with Lord Osiris. So if possible, he hoped that Roy wouldn’t take back his weapon for the time being.
If the words before were still relatively vague, then Tichondrius’s words this time were a little straightforward.
Logically speaking, with dreadlords’ status as spies, they shouldn’t expose themselves. But Tichondrius could tell that Roy and Sargeras were not on the same page. Unlike the fanatical worship of Archimonde and Kil’jaeden for Sargeras, Roy’s status in the Burning Legion was a little… strange. Moreover, Sargeras had once said that Roy had the special power to enter the Void, so the dreadlords judged that Roy was actually using Sargeras and the Burning Legion.
After Roy agreed to let the dreadlords continue to keep Frostmourne, it was equivalent to both sides reaching a true cooperation.
Therefore, in order to repay Roy, the dreadlords generously offered him their ‘sincerity’—a sum of 100 million souls!
In the Burning Legion, Roy had never concealed his greed and pursuit for souls, so the ‘sincerity’ that Tichondrius paid was not surprising…