"She said Sargeras rejected her? Humph! Lies! Interrogate her again!"
Kargath listened with surprise to the message the interrogator brought him, but in his opinion, Sivrakse's words were utter nonsense.
The Supreme Commander's request for aid was rejected, and Sargeras completely ignored the Burning Legion's plight? How could this be!
To anyone examining this result with normal reasoning, Sivrakse's experience was incredibly unbelievable. After all, the leaders of the Burning Legion were not incompetent kings; they were an Invincible army that had conquered countless worlds. How could such a problem arise at this critical juncture?
Not only did Kargath not understand, but Sivrakse herself couldn't believe that her trip to the Burning Throne was met with a closed door. Sargeras completely ignored the Legion's near-collapse, focusing entirely on his own plans, choosing to abandon the Burning Legion.
However, what was done was done. The outcome of the matter ended for an unimaginable reason. But Kargath, unable to obtain more useful information, could only continue to interrogate Sivrakse and Erodus.
He was acting on Arthas's orders to get useful information from the Council of Commanders, and clearly, what they had unearthed so far was far from satisfying him.
After careful consideration, Kargath first reported the matter to Ogrim, letting his superior decide whether to escalate it, while he himself continued his work, seeing if he could extract anything useful.
Soon, the message reached Ogrim. He sat at the round table, briefly scanned it, then folded the letter and tossed it to Lothar across from him.
Lothar took the letter and glanced at it, a look of surprise quickly appearing on his face, identical to Kargath's earlier expression. "Such a thing? Even the Lord of the Legion has abandoned his subordinates? ... Hmm, how credible do you find this?"
"I don't know," Ogrim shook his head. "There's still too little solid information right now, and we can't be sure if this is a smokescreen."
After listening to Ogrim's account, Lothar also pondered for a moment. Just as he was about to continue the discussion, the magic imager on the table suddenly lit up.
Arthas's figure gradually solidified from the blurry magical particles, quickly forming a clear holographic image. "How is it? Any new information?"
Lothar shook his head helplessly. "Not yet. Currently, information about the Burning Throne is limited to the most superficial — but we just extracted from that Eredar admiral that she said the Burning Throne even rejected her. No one knows what the Dark Titan is doing right now."
Information about the Burning Throne was almost a complete black box. Even Arthas only knew that the souls of the Titans were imprisoned within it, but no one, except for the high-ranking members of the Burning Legion, likely knew Sargeras's specific arrangements.
And at present, there were only three Legion commanders they had captured alive: two members of the Council of Commanders, and Archimonde, who was imprisoned in The Maw, stripped of even his consciousness and sanity.
There was no more intelligence to be gained from Archimonde. Although he was reckless and arrogant, he displayed extraordinary caution when it came to matters concerning Sargeras.
He had magically sealed all his memories regarding the Burning Throne and Sargeras. Anyone attempting to probe this knowledge would be cursed, and these memories would be completely destroyed.
It seemed that even a powerful warlock like Archimonde, who never believed he would be captured alive, would become extremely cautious when it came to matters concerning Sargeras.
However, Arthas thought that this extremely strong protective magic might not just be to guard against outsiders; Archimonde might have been trying to deceive Sargeras himself.
Archimonde had always coveted the Dark Titan's immense power, but for ten millennia, he had never found a true opportunity to surpass the Dark Titan. Yet, this was enough for Archimonde to carefully nurture his ambition, preventing Sargeras from settling accounts one day.
As for Kil'jaeden, his soul had been completely annihilated in the massive void black hole created after his death, becoming part of the most basic particles around Argus.
Therefore, the success of the subsequent operations would depend on whether enough intelligence could be obtained from Sivrakse and Erodus.
"First, transmit the location of the Burning Throne to the Allied Forces' command center. At least before the general offensive, we need to make some deployments."
Arthas did not delve into the results of the interrogation. He simply requested the coordinates of the Throne obtained from Sivrakse and relayed this information back to the Azeroth spaceship.
As he watched the ship's terrain generator gradually construct a model of the Burning Throne and its surrounding environment based on the data, the engineer responsible for monitoring the instrument's status let out a surprised gasp.
"Is something wrong?"
After quickly and skillfully operating the panel for a few moments, the engineer said with a puzzled expression, "The data is a bit strange... This data clearly points to the star core region beneath the Argus rift, but the model constructed from the data shows a large number of... lakes and forests."
Lakes and forests?
Where on Argus could there still be an environment with lakes and forests? Even if there were, it would absolutely not appear in the star core layer, which was spewing chaotic energy.
A moment later, the engineer added, "What's even stranger is that this data is indeed correct. Logically, we should be able to derive a normal mountain wall model, but instead, various abnormal values keep appearing... Look here, according to the surrounding data extrapolation, this should be a recessed rock face, but the constructed model now shows a lake standing vertically on the ground."
He cropped a portion of the image and showed it to the leaders. In the model exported by the instrument, they saw a highly incongruous scene inexplicably appearing on the continuous black rock walls: a calm, perfectly normal lake shimmering there, the only problem being its vertical orientation to the ground, with severe tearing and segmentation in the surrounding imagery.
It was like a bizarre situation forcibly grafted onto the image.
"It's like... spacetime has become chaotic."
Jaina looked at the image, and for some reason, this thought popped into her head. Her eyes widened, and she added quickly, "Yes, it's spacetime chaos! The scanned data is normal, but magical disturbances are making the image we see strange... like this..."
Her fingers glowed with magical energy as she began to manipulate the model the engineer had cropped. Soon, the Archmage's intuition led her to those strange nodes, and she smoothed them out one by one with a gentle touch.
Under Jaina's restoration, the true environmental image appeared before everyone. The engineer also emulated Jaina's method, beginning to adjust the new model.
After a while, the restored map of the Burning Throne area was displayed before them, but a new problem arose simultaneously.
What was the deal with these strange spacetime anomalies?
Arthas watched Jaina finish resolving the image distortion issue and couldn't help but ask, "Jaina, can you find the cause?"
Arthas's question made Jaina pause for a moment. She instinctively fell into thought, and it didn't take her long. A few seconds later, the Archmage gave her answer.
"I can take people to investigate, but... Arthas, you must know that temporal magic is absolutely the most elusive type among all magic schools. We might need to get close enough to the actual area where the temporal distortion occurred to figure out the situation—and even then, it's very possible we still won't find the source."
After expressing her opinion, Jaina sighed with a hint of resignation. Her demeanor clearly showed that while she could fix the visual issues, she was pessimistic about the specific cause of the temporal disturbance and whether it could be identified.
This was not a magic laboratory in Dalaran, but a demon planet filled with various complex environmental factors. Not to mention, deep within Argus, the energy environment was even more complex than in ordinary areas, with a large amount of dangerous cosmic radiation and fel energy auroras. The difficulty of this task was imaginable.
However, what mortal mages couldn't do didn't mean no one could. Jaina quickly thought of an alternative solution.
She and Arthas almost simultaneously said, "But the Bronze Dragon might be able to solve this problem."
Indeed, their shared adventures led them to independently think of one race: the Bronze Dragonflight, who guarded the flow of time. These peculiar dragons should be able to see the truth of time and space amidst the chaos.
The Dragonflights and the Titan Keepers were currently on Azeroth defending their homeland, preventing potential sneak attacks by demons. Apart from a few curious dragons who chose to follow mortals to Argus and secretly help the allied forces, most of the Dragonflights had not left Azeroth.
However, there was indeed one Bronze Dragon on the spaceship right now.
Arthas didn't think much of it. He snapped his fingers, and ripples appeared in the space before him, gradually opening a circular void.
"Chromie? What are you doing?"
Arthas looked at Chromie, who was holding two cookies, with a strange expression. There were still uncleaned cookie crumbs and cream on her mouth.
Chromie's small hands froze in mid-air. She awkwardly turned her head, looking at the allied leaders who were staring at her with strange gazes. She quickly put the cookies on a nearby tray and, without a hint of disgust, quickly wiped her hands with her robe before pulling out a pocket watch.
With a crisp "click," Chromie pressed the top of the pocket watch in her hand. The scene in her eyes immediately turned black and white, like a faded painting, and everything around her seemed to be paused.
Of course, this temporal magic had no effect on Arthas. He watched, somewhat speechless, as Chromie used this bit of "time" to clean herself of any stains and unseemly bits.
Chromie cleared her throat twice, smiled widely at Arthas, and then pressed the pocket watch again, allowing time to flow once more.
"Ahem, excuse me, I was just replenishing some expended energy. You know, Dragonflights have a very large appetite."
Chromie drew a large circle with her hand, just as many Gnomes habitually gesticulated to supplement their words.
In fact, it wasn't Chromie's fault. Arthas knew she had been providing magical support to the allied forces. Although she had never appeared before everyone in her Dragonflights form, her magic had indeed benefited many allied soldiers.
After this awkward interlude, the meeting room, which had been solemn due to the temporal anomaly, once again buzzed with discussion. Everyone had already begun discussing the upcoming strategic deployment, and no one paid attention to Chromie's previous impropriety.
"Chromie... uh, Ms. Chromie?" Jaina had seen Chromie many times, but she never quite knew how to address this Dragonflights.
Chromie was completely indifferent to what she was called. Her face was beaming with an infectious smile that no one could refuse. "You can call me whatever you like, Ms. Jaina, after all, we're already quite familiar, aren't we?"
She winked playfully, showing no hint of a Dragonflights's majesty.
Arthas knew the true nature of this Dragonflights. Rather than being like a lofty Dragonflights, she was more like a genuine Gnome—equally enthusiastic, talkative, and prone to messing things up.
"Are you thinking something very rude again?" Chromie asked with a polite smile, but her tone held a deep sense of helplessness.
Of course, she could maintain her Dragonflights's dignity, but what was the point in front of His Majesty?
As a harmless little Dragonflights, Chromie felt that her current state was quite good. "You must need my help with something, right? To be honest, I've been quite bored. Besides giving those warriors some insignificant blessings, it seems I can't do anything else."
Chromie was telling the truth. If she dared to transform into her true form on Argus, she would immediately be targeted by demons. She knew her small body couldn't withstand such abuse.
Moreover, she always felt that in a place like Argus, if she transformed back into a Dragonflights on her own, something very bad might happen.
Chromie, who had considerable confidence in her intuition, dared not act rashly. But if this continued, with all her power but unable to use it, she could only sit in her cabin, using sweets to alleviate her inner anxiety.
Arthas relayed the ship's detection results to Chromie. Chromie nodded as she listened, and after Arthas finished speaking, she held up a finger and mused, "Hmm... can I see that model?"
Arthas nodded to an engineer nearby. The engineer immediately understood and displayed both the original footage and the model repaired by Jaina.
Chromie stared at the two models, examining them back and forth for a long time, before thoughtfully saying, "Hmm... yes, it is indeed a temporal distortion, but it shouldn't be. Why would such an anomaly occur here?"
Unable to find an answer, Chromie immediately started scratching her head. Although the energy at Argus's core was unstable, it shouldn't be able to generate such a temporal anomaly.
Even she rarely saw such temporal rifts occurring naturally, so she could almost certainly conclude that this matter must have been influenced by human factors.
As for who influenced the surrounding area, that answer would probably have to be found by her personally.
Thinking of this, Chromie no longer hesitated. A slit opened in the center of her pupils, revealing her true draconic vertical pupils.
As the Bronze Dragon's power over time pulsed in her hands, some of her physiological features also began to manifest towards her true form.
This state only lasted for a brief moment. Chromie suddenly jumped up as if electrocuted, her face turning pale. Seeing this, Arthas immediately summoned the Light, protecting her and channeling the wild magic that was surging with Chromie's panic.
"Are you alright? What happened?!" Arthas asked quickly.
Chromie, whose face was as white as paper, was in a daze within the warm Light for a long time before she barely regained her senses. She could no longer maintain her smile, and said with extreme terror, "It's... it's the wailing of the Father of the Gods..."