Chapter 348: The World Beneath The Abyss

"Talk? You mean to say you rifled through my shelves merely to learn about such things?"

Suspicion and a faint hint of ridicule colored Malfurion's tone, as though she considered Wang Yu's intent outlandish.

"In part, yes, but not entirely. Still, this is among what I'd like to understand most."

Wang Yu nodded. Above all, what he sought was knowledge of the stars and the Abyss: the first might reveal whether the world beyond this land was an endless cosmos, and the second might confirm—or disprove—certain dangerous conjectures of his own.

"You care little for the fruits of my painstaking research, yet hunger for knowledge taught by my master and his ilk. If that is truly your desire, so be it. Let us talk."

There was a subtle undercurrent of something Wang Yu couldn't discern in her tone.

With the keen perception of a grand knight, however, Wang Yu recognized other differences in her current disposition. Malfurion's conjured face now seemed more grave, more weighty, as if another fragment of her self had emerged.

𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"A split personality?" Wang Yu wondered to himself. Could such a phenomenon even befall a Machine Spirit? Still, that mattered little. What he cared about was whether he could obtain the knowledge he desired.

The projection walked to the wooden table and seated itself like an ordinary human, then gestured for Wang Yu to take the opposite chair. He complied without hesitation.

"Let us speak first of the abyss," Malfurion began. "Or rather, since I'm the one offering up information, I expect you will not complain."

She pressed on, voice low and inexorable.

"The creatures of the Abyss come from the stars—of this there is no doubt. The earliest chronicles tell us that such beings appeared upon our continent as falling stars struck the earth, birthing life from their impact.

"At the beginning, they were scarcely more formidable than the feeblest of slimes—weak, fragile entities hardly worth a scholar's ink."

Malfario leaned suddenly forward, pale hands pressing against the table, his gaze catching Wang Yu with a gleam both probing and sardonic. "So, do you think them weak?"

"Not at all."

Wang Yu knew the tale of the Abyssal War. Only a fool would take such things lightly.

"Good," Malfurion said, leaning back. "Indeed, the ancients dismissed them after a cursory record. Unlike some meteor-born treasures, these creatures seemed devoid of value."

Wang Yu knew what came next.

"With the benefit of hindsight, we now know what a foolish decision that was. You have seen how Skyborne City rushes to examine and clean up every fallen meteorite; the majority of churches and kingdoms do the same thing.

For those frail creatures did not remain so. Their nature was mutable, undefined. They learned. They adapted. They drank of this world's powers—magic, fighting spirit, even the blessings of the divine.

"Without anyone to curtail their growth, these abyssal creatures began to develop and understand their surroundings.

"Reproduction would have been acceptable. Another intelligent race or host of magical beasts on the continent wouldn't be an issue. But worse, they grew by theft. By slaughter.

"They slew beasts and men, devoured their prey, and inherited fragments of what they consumed. Kill a knight, gain a stronger body and a seed of fighting spirit. Kill a mage, gain the gift of spellcraft.

"In this way, the first generation of abyssal spawn shed their weakness and became a scourge. From the silent waters and shadowed forests where they first bred, they surged forth to assail the sentient races.

"Those who should have been easy to slay soon learned to strike back with stolen might. Towns without strong defenders fell. The weak were slaughtered.

"And with each life taken, the Abyss grew stronger.

"The abyssal creatures became like a beast tide, but worse—they were driven not by instinct, but by hunger without end."

Malfurion's eyes bored into Wang Yu's, her words carrying a chilly weight. Wang Yu, however, only listened in silence, his pen scratching across the Endless Pages as he recorded every word.

"In those early days, the intelligent races did not yet comprehend the abyssal peril. Greater calamities had struck before—plagues of monsters, upheavals of the earth. These creatures seemed but a lesser nuisance.

"Armies were dispatched and the unripe abyssal spawn cut down. For a time, they vanished from sight."

Malfurion stopped and glanced at Wang Yu intently, as if giving him a chance to respond.

"It couldn't have been that simple," Wang Yu began. "The Five Races weren't united before the war in the Abyssal Depths. They scarcely shared even a common tongue until that time.

"Without being able to communicate with each other, there must have been some survivors that slipped through the cracks. And given time, such creatures would only grow more terrible."

Malfurion's lips curved faintly. "Just so. The Five Races never compared their findings. Had they known the truth of these creatures, perhaps the subsequent war might not have bled the ground so red.

"A few stragglers fled underground bearing their stolen powers. There they bred in secret, grew strong, and learned yet more dangerous arts, the crux of what came next.

"All lifeforms save for their own kind were their prey. They made no distinction among peasant or priest, warrior or sage. All were but fuel and sustenance.

"Even the gods were not spared. They feasted on the devout of gods of light and darkness alike. These abyssal spawn thus gleaned knowledge of the divine, which we don't fully understand to this very day.

"It is now believed that, in a battle lost to time, an evil god weakened by mischance was similarly struck down by abyssal spawn. In that moment they seized upon something terrible: the power of the Void itself.

"When at last they returned from the abyssal depths decades later, they burst forth wielding divine spells and wizardry, bringing ruin with them.

"Thus derives the name 'abyssal beasts'—for what we now know as the Abyss was no natural chasm, but a vast, cavernous world they had hollowed beneath the earth, an endless pit later entombed by the Morningstar."

Here Malfurion fell silent. She fixed Wang Yu with a level gaze.

"And do you know what makes these abyssal creatures most unique?"

"Their uncanny ability to absorb skills from their prey?"

"Only partly." Malfurion's smile was thin.

"Then...?"

"Their souls. The souls of these beings from the stars are fundamentally unlike our own. Just as their bodies possess no fixed form, their spirits are chaotic, twisted beyond any semblance of order.

"In truth, their souls share an unsettling affinities with the void itself. Perhaps it was precisely this affinity that granted them such astonishing empowerment when they came into contact with it.

"The void bolstered them in a manner wholly unlike wizardry. No—the void carved its blessing directly upon the abyssal creatures' flesh: monstrous regeneration, corruption that could affect both the body and spirit of the intelligent races.

"With such powers, the abyssal spawn that clawed their way back to the surface became calamities incarnate. Where they emerged, kingdoms were wiped from the map in a single day, every living thing slaughtered without mercy.

"Heh. If not for that one thing's existence, the Five Races would have fared far worse. They would not even have had the chance to resist."

Malfurion let out a dry chuckle. Her cryptic allusion sparked a keen flame of curiosity in Wang Yu.

"What thing?"

"The Ossuary."

The name alone summoned in Wang Yu's mind an indelible memory: that colossal edifice of bleached bone stretching across the plain outside a forest cottage. It was one of the few beings he had witnessed that could only be described as apex existences in the world.

"The tide of death itself drew it forth. The first abyssal hordes were crushed beneath its weight, giving the Five Races a moment to breathe.

"Armies gathered from every corner of the continent—not only from the Five Races, but also the dragons, who would later vanish from the land entirely, and the giants from the highest of mountains, whose kind was already perilously rare.

"Even so, the abyssal creatures, clad now in both void and divine power, returned again and again like waves upon rock. Gods fell beneath their onslaught. Kingdoms whose strength had been honed over centuries were swept aside like sandcastles.

"The dwarves, in desperation, ignited the lava veins beneath their cities, drowning both themselves and vast numbers of abyssal fiends in volcanic wrath. The World Tree was sundered into three so that its destruction might be averted, while what remained still offered lifeblood to the races who depended on it.

"The Winged flung open the gates of their ancient capital and hurled them like a weapon into the abyssal ranks. When the war ended, they scarcely knew how to find their way home again. Such stories are many, each a testament to the blood-price paid in that war without end.

"Yet it was precisely this shared peril that ultimately forged lasting unity. Once possessing disparate knowledge, power, and resources, the Five Races became as one. And from this crucible rose figures of unmatched brilliance: Roland, Sulla, Rhine... prodigies, one and all.

"It is amusing, in its way—for though humanity was weakest in many regards, it was among them that the greatest number of such transcendent geniuses arose.

"The war dragged on, the intelligent races clinging to existence with a resilience none had thought possible. Time and again the abyssal hordes battered their defenses, yet never did they wholly break them. And then—" Malfario's eyes gleamed, voice solemn. "Then, the star bloomed."

"The Morningstar." Her tone carried reverence and dread alike. "A weapon beyond your imagining. The work of countless wizards, the mad brilliance of those paragons, and the wealth of the entire continent. It was smaller than Skyborne City, and yet even Skyborne City was rendered pitifully insignificant in comparison."

"Its destructive might was only part of what ended the war. The true reason was this—it made the abyssal creatures unfit for our world. Yes. It remade the very fabric of existence.

"The detonation tore through the planes. What had once been a single manifold of elements was split apart into distinct elemental planes. The blast ripped into the void itself by design—the Morningstar's makers had harnessed the void's power to alter the world entire.

"Difficult as it may be to sense, the truth is this: the world before the Morningstar's detonation, and the world after, are not the same."