The Great Thief

In the last hours of the War of the Shifting Sands, the alliance of the four giant dragons and the Night Elves were closing in on the core of the Qiraj Empire. The different insects of Silithus retreated in defeat, ending up in the Fortress of Ahn’Qiraj City.

But inside the gates of Ahn’Qiraj, there was a different group of giant insects waiting for them, a number that was unfathomable for the Kalimdor allies.

After going through an endless military campaign, the Kalimdor allies still had no way to defeat the Qiraj Empire and her various insects. They could only use some powerful magic to seal them up, and because of the flames of war, Ahn’Qiraj was now a pile of cursed ruins.

After thousands of years, the aggressive heart of the Qiraj was not softened by their restrictions. There was now a new generation of various insects who slowly emerged from their cocoon of a lair. The Ahn’Qiraj ruins were once again filled with different Qiraj insects.

A shiny, giant protective screen was stretched over the mountains of the east and west. In order to see what the outcome was like inside, some players climbed up onto some towering cliffs that were quite far away. They discovered that the world inside the walls was pretty much the same as the world outside: blistering hot and dry, with everything covered by sand and billowing dust.

In some ancient books, the Elves called the area inside the walls as “Ahn Qiraj”.

The players used a lot of different ways to attempt to get over the wall, including methods that involved flying for both long and short periods of time. However, every time they flew close to the wall, they were shredded up by some mysterious force.

They could only get into Ahn’Qiraj by opening the main gate. This was the answer that the System gave.

A giant gong was waiting for the players to strike it.

The steps of war were gradually approaching.

Lu Li stood in front of the wall of beetles. Looking around, he saw that there were quite a few players who were fighting against bugs. These bugs were rather weak. They were part of the group that had come after the beetle wall was established, and they had only been attracted from outside the wall because of their blood relations with other insects.

Lu Li didn’t call people over straight away, but rather waited until the second day.

Early in the morning on the second day, he received news that the three major clubs had assembled their forces yesterday. It wasn’t just the Elven members coming out. Even normal players were brought out to join in the fun.

Drizzle Court and Peerless City were calmly completing the opening quest.

The clubs which were doing the opening quest to begin with had shamelessly plundered the market for materials, which made the price of them jump up like crazy.

However, the materials required for the opening quest, apart from Elementium Ore, weren’t considered to be very rare. The price of these materials would drop sooner or later, so they wouldn’t have to spend so much money the next time they did a quest.

Apart from the three quests before that had rewards of Epic equipment, all the other rewards were lackluster and it wasn’t worth spending too much on them.

This was especially the case with the Black Qiraji Battle Tank. Only the player who finished the quest first would receive it.

When it came to opening up, the only leader they needed was Lu Li. It didn’t matter who he picked to form the team.

Furthermore, because Lu Li had finished the quest, the guild that Lu Li was part of was able to enter the Instance Dungeon without having to do any more quests.

As such, the team and guild that Lu Li was part of could come and go into the Instance Dungeon freely.

Of course, if others wanted to do the quest, no one was stopping them. However, with so many parts to it, people only did it for the Reputation, and they questioned if it was really worth it.

The Ahn’Qiraj Instance Dungeon was in Silithus.

Because this place appeared in a new Instance Dungeon, it had recently been packed with people.

Silithus was a wilderness like Tanaris, but it wasn’t the same as the latter, which was a fertile and well-watered land. Although this was the case, frequent rains allowed this area to support relatively more types of life. At the very least, it had more types of life than in the Shimmering Flats.

Furthermore, the plants here were able to store water; travelers were able to drink from the cacti here.

There was a type of recipe called ‘Cactus Fritter’. The flavor was very novel; it tasted a bit like a mustard onion fried pancake, just with the velvety texture of cactus juice. Those who liked it thought it was a delicious taste, but for those who didn’t, even when they tried it in real life, they would feel it was absolutely nauseating.

Apart from the insects, there were also two major groups in Silithus: the Elves of the Cenarion Circle and a group of the Twilight Hammer.

The former was an assembly of Druids, and the latter were believers in the Old God. Their members were mainly from the Horde, as well as a few humans. Altogether, there were many more of them than the Druids.

Although the Twilight Hammer was also an evil force to players, at least they kept a relatively solitary lifestyle here and didn’t interfere with either the Alliance or the Horde. They would just perform their own strange rituals, or maybe go back and forth digging up ancient ruins.

Furthermore, they spent most of their time fighting with the beetles in the ancient Kaldorei cities, not caring about whether adventurers lived or died.

Other players could also enter into the Twilight camp. There, they could make repairs and stockpile provisions. There was also a humble lodge for adventurers which was a place for them to rest, but almost none of the adventurers were willing to believe the insane members of this sect. Apart from this, the Twilight Hammer also had a lot of sentry posts, including one in Crystal Valley. However, they weren’t anything more than a lookout tower with a few tents.

The main safety zone for players was the Tomb of Warriors.

In these Elven ruins, there was pretty much only the Cenarion Circle. They were here keeping tabs on the activities of the different insects and the Twilight Hammer, as well as going into the ruins nearby from time to time to explore. They also opened up a small road to Un’Goro.

The Cenarion Circle were considered an Alliance-leaning neutral group.

Horde players could also do things here and receive some quest related to the insects.

Although the Stronghold of the Tomb of Warriors was the largest meeting place in Silithus, when over 200000 players came here, they made it as packed as a can of sardines. It was a good thing that this was the age of virtual gaming. A few hundred years ago in the computer gaming era, the servers would probably crash.

There were hundreds of thousands of players, and the combined strength of three clubs.

Although it wasn’t explicitly said that it was full, there was some sort of invisible dispersing force that made the players escape quickly, though they didn’t want to leave. At this, they all stopped a far distance away. There were more and more people, with this army looking even more unbelievably large.

Someone did some calculations and found that if the players were able to inflict as much damage as NPCs, then the combined power of the players rivalled that of all the forces of Azeroth.

There were simply too many people!

Now, they assembled in front of the beetle wall, ready to finish off those hopeless bugs once and for all, alongside the dragons and Night Elves who had fought them before.

Of course, they were not as powerful as the dragons and Night Elf allied troops of the past, but neither were the insects. The most powerful of the insects had been thrown into the Instance Dungeon by the System.

An Ahn’Qiraj Gong had been placed outside the bug wall. The portrait of a Gold Scarab was particularly shiny under the hot sun of Silithus.

Lu Li was riding his Black Qiraji Battle Tank, weaving his way through the troops, before slowly finally arriving in front of the gong.