In his more than ten years of debut, Sarlayan has dealt with trolls from various clans.
Until now, he did not dare to say that he fully understood the endless voodoo methods of trolls. Trolls from different clans could come up with new tricks for him from time to time.
Sarlayan even suspected that the troll civilization was still primitive and backward during these more than ten thousand years. The main reason was that they put all their energy into studying voodoo and never thought about science and technology.
Of course, this is just a joke.
Logically speaking, voodoo is also part of the magic system, and magic and technology are just tools to pursue the truth. In the end, they reach the same goal through different paths.
What makes Sarlayan unbearable is not the trolls' fanatical love for voodoo, but that they do not use voodoo in the right way and think about how to torture people all day long.
Use barrage jokes to make an analogy.
Obviously, research on gunpowder technology can further improve the power of explosive weapons and effectively enhance the country's force and deterrence. However, some people with bright minds just don't take the right path and insist on using it to blow up shit in manholes.
Trolls... To be precise, trolls other than Zandalar almost fit this metaphor.
No, the Atalai cultists have developed a new trick through voodoo methods.
Now that he has been exposed to voodoo research at the soul level, Sarlayan can't figure out why Atalai didn't learn Zandalari.
With the help of Death Loabang Sandy, I gained a deeper understanding of the concept of death. Instead, I used my brains to transform these one-time self-destruction bombs for wraiths.
There is a saying, but it is true that it is a waste of natural resources.
Sarlayan cannot understand the brain circuits of cultists.
These self-exploding wraiths that are only immune to all damage for a short period of time are not very harmful, but are more likely to cause initial kills.
As long as you run around like dogs and don't take the initiative to approach or touch them, the resentful spirits will not be able to cause any harm and will automatically disappear when their activity time reaches the limit.
The deaths of the six high-ranking Atalai priests will inevitably alarm the Atalai leadership squatting in the core area at the bottom.
After all, the Atal'Hakkar Temple is the enemy's home ground, and there are also dream demon forces hiding in the dark, ready to cause trouble at any time.
Sarlayan did not want to face the cultists' crazy counterattack.
Whether it can be fought is one thing, whether it is necessary is another.
Under Sarlayan's order, the Backlight Blade thieves who completed their respective tasks sneaked back on the spot.
Next, under the personal leadership of Valeela, they will continue to go deep into the bottom of the temple. Their main task is to find out the specific location of Atalai's leader and carry out the assassination.
Just in case, Sharlayan sent Jaina there as well.
Jaina can't sneak, but she can use the mage's unique invisibility spell to enter phase space. It's not that easy for trolls to catch her.
The Temple of Atal'Hakkar is a typical troll pyramid structure, with the floors getting larger as you go down.
With more than a hundred thieves spread out on the ground floor of Nuoda's temple, it was not crowded at all. Sarlayan, who planned to act alone, speculated that it would take at least several hours for the Backlight Blade to complete the assassination target.
The development of the situation was just as Sarlayan expected.
Fortunately, the thieves acted quickly enough and finally reached the bottom of the temple before the Atalai cultists blocked the descending stairs.
The stairwell is only so big, and if you move a little slower, the opponent will be able to form a formation, creating a situation where one man is in control and no one can open the door.
...Of course, the actual situation is definitely not that bad, and Atalai may not necessarily have such a powerful general.
The thieves of the Backlight Blade need to actively avoid the Atalai trolls that are roaring towards the middle level like rats exploding a nest. This will inevitably cause their exploration progress to be slowed down.
With Valeera and Jaina personally on guard, Sarlayan is not worried about the safety of the thieves.
Even if they are unlucky enough to encounter the Dream Demon Army, these two heroines who are proficient in space teleportation can immediately move to the scene to resolve the crisis.
After the thieves split into two groups and started taking action, Sarlayan stood in the central ring of the hall and observed the surrounding situation.
The structure of the ground floor of the temple is not complicated, with only 6 intersections in total.
To the north is the stairwell leading to the middle area. A large number of Atalai trolls are swarming towards the middle area... although this is of no use.
There is only one road to the south directly opposite the stairwell. Using Eagle Eye, you can only see a corner. Sarlayan can vaguely feel a familiar and ominous atmosphere from the depths of this road.
There are two intersections on the west and east sides respectively. If the information provided by the barrage is true, the two roads on each side are connected to each other, and the final destination is two halls with different purposes.
The experience given by the barrage based on the game copy cannot be fully believed. In the real Azeroth, Atalai's leader cannot always squat in one place and wait for the enemy to challenge him.
According to the barrage, the Attalai leader they knew was named Prophet Jamalan.
However, the information they know comes from a few years later in the original history, and no one can guarantee whether there will be any changes in Atalai's personnel in the past few years.
If you just apply the information provided by the barrage without thinking, you may suffer big losses due to inertial thinking.
Therefore, Sarlayan has never spoken out the name of the prophet Jammalan, so as not to let the thieves of the Backlight Blade form a preconceived and wrong perception.
Personnel can be replaced, but the purpose of the temple's halls should not change drastically in a few years, especially when the altar of Hakkar is involved.
If nothing else happens, the hall to the west of the temple should be the altar used to worship Haka, replacing the abandoned altar located on the water.
To the east is the administrative area where the Atalai core is located, and most of the Atalai leaders should be concentrated in this area.
Considering that Hakkar was knocked into autistic state by Sharlayan not long ago, the task of exploring Hakkar's Altar was assigned to the second detachment of the Backlight Blades, led by Jaina.
Valeela personally led the first detachment to explore the Atalai administrative hall to the east.
"As expected of a fanatical cultist who believes in Haka."
When the black panther transformed from Sarlayan went south as a stalker, he discovered many giant wind serpents who were the descendants of Haka, with various attributes.
Sarlayan did not alert the snake, he took the initiative to bypass these large spicy sticks and continued to move towards the south intersection.
The closer he got to the passage, the more obvious the oppressive atmosphere that Sarlayan felt.
"it is as expected."
After turning the last corner, Sarlayan saw a huge beast with a black and green halo all over its body.
To be precise, it is a giant beast whose soul body was corrupted by the dream demon.
It was a huge turtle, which looked quite similar to Tortola in terms of appearance and body shape.
But Sarlayan can be sure that this guy is definitely not Tortola.
Not long before setting off for Draenor, Sharlayan also visited the Emerald Dream and contacted several demigods remotely.
Except for the arrogant Goldrinn and the withdrawn Ashaman who did not respond to contact, all the demigods were alive and kicking in the Emerald Dream, including the turtle demigod Tortola.
【This guy...could he be Nemesis?】
[It doesn’t look like that. Isn’t Nemesis a very cool-looking flame turtle? 】
[That is its form after being infused with flames by Ragnaros. The original appearance of Nemesis and Tortola are almost identical.]
[The positioning of Nemesis is very similar to that of Lecanthos to Goldrinn. It is the shadow of Tortola, his other side. 】
[In the original history, the Twilight Hammer wanted to replace the turtle demigods and wolf gods of Tortola and Goldrinn with Nemesis and Lakanthos, but they failed in the end. 】
"The shadow of Tortola..."
Sarlayan looked thoughtfully at the armored beast that had obviously completely lost its mind.
"This is Atalai's biggest reliance, right? This guy looks pretty good."
As the shadow of a demigod, representing the dark side of their wild nature, Nemesis originally had no entity in the material world, which is the main reason why it and Lycanthos were easily corrupted by the Dream Demon.
"Don't all wild demigods have a shadow of the dark side?"
The corner of Sarlayan's mouth twitched: "What are you playing with? Split personality?"
[That’s not to say, as far as we know, the only demigods with shadow side are Goldrinn and Tortola, and the others have not heard of it at least so far. 】
"Fine."
Sarlayan kept sneaking around Nemesis in a circle. The big turtle didn't notice anyone approaching at all, and it still closed its eyes tightly and remained motionless.
Sarlayan, who maintained his black panther appearance, simply squatted down at the entrance to the hall in front of Nemesis.
"Let's wait for news from Valeera and Jaina first. As long as this big turtle doesn't move, I won't bother to put in more effort."
"but……"
Sarlayan looked thoughtfully at the incubus aura rising from Nemesis: "I wonder if I can use the power of these incubus to trace back to the place where Varosen was recovering from his injuries... Let's give it a try."