The Great Thief

It took Lu Li 4-6 minutes to arrive before the soul again. The soul was waiting bitterly at the side of the road and immediately floated over as soon as he saw Lu Li.

Lu Li handed over Thrall’s command to him and waited patiently as the NPC read the letter.

If the quest was this simple, he wouldn’t have travelled so far to complete it. However, the Lost Justice Badge was a total surprise. Lu Li now had other goals in mind.

As Lu Li was thinking, he heard sobbing and turned his head to see the soul crying.

“Yes… this is all my fault. If I had not done that at the time…” It was rare for Tauren to cry, with children being an exception. It must have been something heart breaking for someone to cry after they had experienced death.

“Is there anything that I can do for you?” That was all Lu Li could say. He couldn’t tell the soul to keep his head up for the future – there was no future for him. They either went to heaven, hell, or wandered around. Either way, there were no good endings.

The soul finally calmed himself and said, “Listen to me… you have to listen…”.

“Sure, I’d love to hear it.” As the quest continued, Lu Li wished that he could help this Warrior who was filled with regret. Perhaps the Warrior just needed someone to stop by and listen to his story, and then do what they could for him.

They arrived at the Blasted Lands like any other average day.

They ran along the surface covered by black rocks, through the plains burnt by lightning and reached the Dark Portal. What stood before them was a Demon – Razelikh the Defiler.

The Demon was an unbeatable existence for the soldiers, but they didn’t run. When they faced a Demon, running was not in the Tauren Warriors’ dictionary.

They were like Don Quixote, who rushed to the windmill with a sword. They were guided by a sort of blind and sad strength that led them to the ends of their lives.

The once Warrior calmly recalled his death with one sentence.

Perhaps to him, it was of no importance.

Yes, he died, but his comrades now faced something even worse than death – this pained him even more than death itself. It was also the reason why he was so filled with regret, so much so that with this grudge alone, he wandered this empty land by himself.

Perhaps he could say that his friends didn’t die, but they did at the same time.

The souls of those 18 Warriors were taken from their bodies by the demon and they now walked without them. Their souls had been imprisoned and as long as time continued to pass, they would eternally suffer and be tormented.

“Adventurer, you need to break those 18 stones… go and set their souls free — relieve them of their eternal torment.”

The system sent Lu Li a new quest.

Lu Li nodded silently and followed the system guide.

There was a thick fence with a door made by logs that had been sharpened to the point. Within the fence was a small building made of simple rocks; it seemed about two floors high. A pathway led to the entrance that was guarded by two Ogres standing with their weapons.

This was the place that Lu Li was looking for.

The Blasted Lands was once a swamp called the Black Morass; it was similar to the Swamp of Sorrows.

After Medivh created the Dark Portal to link Azeroth with the Tauren’s home Draenor, the Tauren crossed the portal and began the first war. The mysterious magic of the Tauren was so strong that it destroyed the swamp and left behind a dry, red land.

The Alliance destroyed the Dark Portal and the contamination stopped spreading, but the Blasted Lands could no longer be restored.

At the time, it seemed like the Horde didn’t have enough military power to stop the Dreadmaul Ogres from passing through the Dark Portal. What was different from the Tauren was that these Ogres stayed. Clearly, they had now became fangs for the Demon.

Lu Li checked the levels of the Ogres, and as expected, they were level 58. Fortunately, he was level 60. He carefully and silently got close to the guards with light feet and passed between them while their heads were turned.

Any experienced Thief wouldn’t let their target’s gaze fall on themselves, and they definitely wouldn’t meet their target’s gaze.

Lu Li searched around for a while and finally found a soul in the camp.

It was strange for souls to be around Blasted Lands. He got closer and carefully examined the figure that stood there empty-minded. The soul was smaller than the average Tauren and he wore normal clothes. He wore no heavy armour, not even a leather armour like some other Warriors. The soul was wrapped in a jacket that was pieced together by broken cloth; it looked like any soul body that was buried in a rush and in the wild.

Only some faint traces revealed that he was a Tauren when he was alive.

It wasn’t wise to rush in for an upfront battle. First of all, these souls that appeared before Lu Li were just containers. Real spirits could not be killed. If you attacked it, it’d scream and attract the Ogre Elites. Lu Li wasn’t afraid of one or two of them, but there were hundreds of them in this camp. If he couldn’t finish them off fast enough, there’d also be an Ogre boss waiting for him.

In order to take them out, he’d have to destroy the green crystal nearby that was filled with evil energy.

Lu Li knew that these souls were all once heroes who fought against the Burning Legion to the end. However, as someone who was reincarnated, he had no way of saving them. The best that he could do was to set them free.

The nine servants of Razelikh were easily finished off. Lu Li didn’t dare to stay any longer and quickly rushed to the next Ogre camp. Three Sevine servants, three Allistarj servants and three Grol servants were quickly finished off too. In the end, there was a total of 18 souls.

Thrall was an open-minded leader. His guards included Trolls, Orcs, Forgotten Ones and Tauren. So, Lu Li also saved other races in the process. These souls could no longer talk to him, but he could almost hear their last sighs. “Finally, freedom at last…” they breathed as he felt them being released.

These were the comrades of the soul in the wild. He wandered around in the Blasted Lands constantly thinking about his comrades. Regardless whether this was in real life or in a game, brotherhood was always something that people appreciated.

They couldn’t ask to be born at the same time, but at least they could ask to die on the same day. Something often seen as a joke in real life made him feel sour in the stomach in a game.