CHAPTER 728: DUKE

Anyone could see that Duke was expelling all the contamination from the Sunwell in one swift motion, consolidating it into a massive sphere. Every elf’s face was etched with profound surprise. None of them had imagined that Duke could successfully extract the pollutants using the magic circle left by Dath’Remar.

But... why couldn’t Jaina and the others achieve this, even though they used the same ancestral magic circle? Solarian, forbidden from interfering with the Sunwell, pondered this question as she watched Duke. Suddenly, she made a discovery that shocked her beyond belief—Duke was simultaneously modifying Dath’Remar’s ancient magic circle!

Oh my god! Even she, a specialist in ancient languages and renowned as a new generation of elven scholars, couldn’t claim to immediately translate those complex ancient elven scripts. Duke not only understood them but was also modifying and fine-tuning them on the spot. And remember, Duke was actively controlling the Sunwell. A normally functioning Sunwell was already difficult to operate, so wouldn’t the difficulty increase by more than a hundredfold with large amounts of pollutants present?

Solarian’s graceful figure trembled, a shock from the depths of her soul. Once, her primary reason for loyalty to Prince Kael’thas was her admiration for his talent in magic. That innate ability to effortlessly master any elven magic was truly a once-in-a-millennium gift. Although Kael’thas had been stuck at the Archmage level, this perfection had remained unbroken until Duke appeared...

Witnessing Duke’s masterful techniques, which he had seemingly learned entirely on his own, as well as his courage and ability to effortlessly modify the works of his predecessors, Solarian’s worldview began to completely unravel. If Kael’thas was a magical genius appearing once in a thousand years, then Duke was one who emerged once in ten thousand years.

There’s no harm in comparison. They were both geniuses, but Kael’thas, who had remained at the Archmage level for over a thousand years, couldn’t compare to Duke, who had broken through to the Dawn Sun level before the age of thirty. He couldn’t even compare to Antonidas, a human genius also hailed as a once-in-five-thousand-year prodigy. It certainly didn’t feel good to be repeatedly surpassed by human genius.

Unconsciously, tears welled in Solarian’s eyes. In fact, she wasn’t the only one who had shed tears witnessing the Sunwell’s collapse, but these tears were different. No one paid attention to the great astrologer’s emotional display.

Duke’s palm moved as if kneading a ball of mud. He continuously poured the inky black, polluted well water into this "mud ball" and stirred it constantly. Finally, a super-blackened sphere, more than three kilometers in diameter, appeared in everyone’s sight. From a distance, ignoring its immense size, it might resemble those "dark dishes" from anime before Duke’s transmigration—a terrifying entity emitting a black aura.

Next, more debris flew out of the sea around the island and converged onto the growing mass.

"Go—" Duke extended his left index finger, and dozens of golden magic runes flew from it, growing larger and larger until each rune was the size of a carriage, enveloping the sphere all at once. A few seconds later, after the spherical mass reached a diameter of five kilometers, it finally stopped growing and suddenly began to roll into the sea...

Sylvanas’s face was filled with surprise: "This is..."

Duke rolled his eyes at her: Do you still need to ask? I’d rather die than have my friend die!

If his estimation was correct, before its magic power dissipated, this sphere would roll into the ocean current and dissolve, eventually being sucked into the colossal whirlpool in the middle of the Endless Sea. If one had to name a victim in the end, it would probably be some race living in the deep sea. For example, the Naga! The deep-sea Naga led by Vashj! Or the high-borne elves who had transformed into the self-proclaimed noble Queen Azshara’s Naga!

In any case, what Duke was doing now was similar to what had happened before his transmigration, when a nuclear power plant on an island nation exploded due to a tsunami, causing immense suffering to all the countries in the Pacific Ocean. But there shouldn’t be any race that believed in the Alliance living on the seabed, right? Anyway, elves weren’t oceanographers.

Then... ahem! The extremely mischievous Duke pretended not to have considered how the situation would develop. Well, what if all the guys outside the Alliance are dead? It’s none of my business! That’s the reason!

Of course, in Sylvanas’s eyes, Duke was, for her and to preserve her beloved Eversong Forest, willing to exhaust all his energy and take the immense risk of magical backlash to send the pollutants away. Sylvanas’s red lips parted and closed like a fish out of water, tears welled in her eyes, and her entire chest swelled with affection.

The elves looked at the golden Sunwell water, whose level had drastically dropped but had become noticeably purer, and expressions of ecstasy appeared on their faces. Unexpectedly, Duke poured cold water on their joy.

"Everyone, attention! The explosion is coming!" A loud roar startled all the nearby elves. They repeatedly checked their protective magic circle, because if the magic circle broke, not only they but also all the witnesses under its protection would perish.

Why would the purified Sunwell explode? This involved a simple scientific principle: an explosion usually consists of two parts—first, there must be combustible materials, and second, a narrow space filled with dust or similar substances. Duke was indeed discharging waste, but the Scourge’s pollution of the Sunwell wasn’t simply solid particle contamination. If it were solid, it would be like a certain pure water advertisement, where eighteen layers of filtration would solve the problem. This was pollution and impurity at the soul level.

With the help of the system elves and the magic circle, Duke was able to separate the uncontaminated well water from the seriously contaminated ones. But the part in between was not so easy to deal with. The simplest method was still to destroy all of this well water. But how to destroy it?

Suddenly, all the elves heard a loud roar coming from the ruins of Silvermoon City. A colossal water elemental, emanating a foul aura, rose to its full height! Its body was dark green, filled with a nauseating dark energy. It was incredibly tall; initially, only its head protruded from the city wall. As Duke continued to madly inject the impure Sunwell water into the mana vein leading to Silvermoon City, the polluted water elemental rapidly grew in size. In just a few blinks of an eye, it transformed into a super monster over a hundred meters tall, and its size was still increasing.

"Duke, what are you doing?!" Sylvanas screamed.

Duke smiled calmly: "It is a monster with pollutants as its core. It will instinctively absorb pollutants in the well water as nutrients for growth. When it stops growing, the pollutants will be gone. However, it will cost us to destroy it. First of all, we can’t destroy it in the water. Then, destroying it also requires more magic power..."