"It really is pitch black."
The blue flames in Ogrim's eye sockets burned brighter, allowing him to see clearly in the darkness.
"No one has been to this tower for nearly twenty years; it would be strange if there were torches lit," Lothar said as a matter of course, until he saw the light from a torch at the other end of the dark corridor.
"Then tell me, what's going on over there?" Ogrim pointed to the end of the corridor where torches were burning, and they could even faintly hear singing and musical instruments.
Lothar rubbed his eyes, making sure he wasn't mistaken, and after a long while, he whispered, "Damn it... that leads to the first-floor banquet hall... It seems Medivh's death has also cursed this tower."
"Good thing we're going up, to Medivh's library."
Lothar led Ogrim to a seemingly endless spiraling staircase, and the old wooden steps seemed unable to bear the weight of the two armored men; each step they took produced a disconcerting creak.
The rickety wooden steps and handrails forced Lothar and Ogrim to move very carefully, fearing that one heavy step would send them tumbling to the bottom of the stairs.
However, what they feared came true. Perhaps because Ogrim was an Orc, the staircase's load-bearing capacity hadn't accounted for him, and combined with years of disrepair, when he stepped on the next stair, the fragile wooden board snapped.
"Crack!"
Ogrim's body lost balance, and half of his calf was directly stuck in the wooden board. The Orc agilely grabbed the stone wall instead of the equally fragile handrail.
It took a while for the broken part of the wooden board to make a dull thud as it hit the ground. Medivh's Mage Tower seemed to have extraordinary Arcane power echoing in every inch of its space, making the actual distance much greater than it appeared.
Ogrim's expression remained unchanged; with a forceful grip on the wall, his body was pulled back onto the steps. He was silent for a moment before saying, "The height of this tower seems much greater than it appears from the outside."
"That's right, not only the height, but the space inside is also much larger than it appears from the outside. Medivh's library alone is probably as big as a district in Stormwind."
It took them some effort to dimensional travel the dilapidated staircase, and when they stood on the stone floor, their suspended hearts finally settled.
Karazhan was a place that constantly exuded strangeness. Even the two Death Knights were unwilling to stay in this ghostly place for long, only wanting to quickly find what Arthas needed and leave to avoid further trouble.
However, just as they passed through a hall with strange statues and entered an incredibly wide corridor, the tall, cold stone statue at the end of the corridor caught Lothar's attention.
He stopped Ogrim, who was still moving forward, causing the Orc to ask with some confusion, "What's wrong?"
"Wait... that statue looks familiar to me." Lothar observed the surroundings, then cleaved a brick on the ground with his sword, picked it up with his foot, and kicked it into the open space ahead.
Before the broken brick landed, nothing unusual happened, but the moment the brick hit the ground, barrel-thick blue-purple lightning shot out from the reliefs on both sides of the corridor, pulverizing the hard stone into dust.
"Is it a magic trap?"
Ogrim looked at the shattered brick, indicating whether they should destroy the magical devices on both sides.
"No... it's not just a magic trap..." Lothar's gaze remained fixed on the huge statue at the end of the corridor. He felt that the Arcane energy seemed to have come alive, surging towards the statue.
The eyes of the colossal white stone statue flashed with a brilliant blue light, and its previously lowered arms slowly began to lift, its movements transitioning from stiff to fluid.
"Unauthorized intruders detected. 'The Curator' is preparing to activate contingency protocol."
A mechanical voice, devoid of any emotion, echoed through the empty corridor. The tall construct, The Curator, clapped its two hands together, unleashing a dense flurry of Arcane lightning that illuminated the entire corridor as if it were daytime.
Ogrim raised his hand to block the rampant lightning storm, and at the same time, wanted to clarify what a contingency protocol was.
"Contingency protocol? What's that!"
"I don't know either! But it definitely doesn't mean a friendly welcome—prepare for battle!"
Lothar swung the longsword in his hand, cleaving through the blue Arcane energy. The shockwave tore apart the floor tiles beside him. "This is Medivh's magical construct; we can't bypass it to take Medivh's collection!"
"Hmph, understood. Tell me, what's this big rock's weakness!"
"Do you see those Arcane crystals on its body? Those are its energy connection nodes. Every time one is destroyed, a part of its body will stop functioning!"
After hearing Lothar's explanation, Ogrim gripped his warhammer and raised a dark green magic shield, moving against the Arcane storm generated by The Curator. The distance between the man and the construct was rapidly shrinking.
The Curator also realized that this seemingly small individual posed a great threat to it. It raised its stone hand and delivered a heavy blow to the ground.
The ground trembled like an earthquake under The Curator's heavy blow, and Ogrim's movement was also hindered. He had to slow down to avoid falling or exposing weaknesses.
However, The Curator's attack was not just this one. Its vast Arcane energy surged out, and surprisingly, it conducted through the ground, condensing into numerous Arcane creatures in front of Ogrim.
These magical creatures, composed of pure energy, were the nightmare of all professions lacking spell attack methods—but Medivh's database given to The Curator did not contain information on professions like Death Knight.
Runic power surged, and the great might from death wrapped around Ogrim's warhammer. He swung the heavy Runic warhammer as usual, and the Arcane creatures, controlled by The Curator, fearlessly lunged at Ogrim.
In The Curator's perception, such melee attacks could not threaten elemental creatures at all, but when Ogrim's warhammer landed on those Arcane creatures, they perfectly embodied the word "fragile."
The power of death instantly corroded the structure of the Arcane creatures upon contact, destroying the purity of their energy and leaving them in a state of disarray.
Such chaos was more than these temporarily created Arcane creatures could bear. Their internal crystalline energy was quickly corroded, becoming as fragile as glass.
Ogrim ignored the damage from the Arcane energy, directly reaching into the body of an Arcane fiend, and with a grip of his five fingers, crushed its dim core.
Seeing that a few magical creatures could not threaten Ogrim, The Curator still wanted to launch an attack while Ogrim had not fully resolved the problem, but a figure appeared as if falling from the sky within its scanning range.
Lothar held his Runic sword in a reverse grip, and using the momentum of his descent, he directly plunged the blade into the crystal on The Curator's left shoulder.
Two forces immediately clashed violently within that exquisite crystal. In the blink of an eye, spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the surface of the hard Arcane crystal.