"Bang, bang, bang!" A harsh knocking sound roused Jess from his sleep.

"Jess! Jess!"

"Coming."

Jess threw on his shirt and opened the door. Many people on the street were heading towards the city gates. It seemed that a grand assembly was being held at the city walls. The noise was deafening.

In front of him, a tall, hulking figure reached out and grabbed him by the collar.

"What are you up to, hmm? You're lazing about on such an important day, about to miss all the action!"

"Tall" was far from an insult. This brawny individual, with a full, black beard and a coarse face marked with an eyepatch, was a dwarf. He was definitely a standout figure among his kin in terms of height.

"So, Grit, what's going on?" Jess asked impatiently.

"Don't you want to see Alleria Windrunner?" the dwarf named Grit said excitedly. "She's the Ranger-General of Quel'Thalas and the sweetheart of General Turalyon...If you miss out now, when will you ever get a chance to behold such elven beauty?"

Upon hearing the name Alleria Windrunner, Jess's heart pounded twice.

It wasn't because he had any particular feelings for the elven general, but because this familiar name suddenly stirred up memories of his past life that had been buried deep within his heart.

Yes, he was a transmigrant who had been in this world for seventeen years.

From the moment he was yanked out of his mother's belly, he felt something was off. The memories of his past life were as clear as stone inscriptions, and even the rapid brain development of a three-to-five-year-old child could not erase those memories.

One moment, he was fully focused on exploring the World of Warcraft in front of his computer, and the next, after a wave of drowsiness, everything in front of him changed completely.

He was born in the city of Lordaeron. His father was a guard of Lordaeron who watched over the city walls, and his mother was the daughter of a farmer in Brill.

His childhood was relatively smooth, but the Dark Portal was opened, and the Orc War broke out when he was ten years old. Luckily, the city of Lordaeron was not seriously affected by the orc war.

Stories of chaos and disaster in the far south, as described by refugees fleeing the Stormwind Kingdom, made Jess realize that everything here was exactly as described in the game world.

In that case, if he wanted to live a peaceful life, he would have to leave Lordaeron and settle in Stormwind City.

According to the game plotline, in a decade or so, the splendid Lordaeron city would be completely destroyed by the Scourge, and the whole kingdom would be ravaged by the Plague.

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Those unfortunate enough to perish would not find peace in death, but would be dragged from their graves by necromantic magics to fight for the undead masters who wanted to conquer the world until they were shattered and could no longer stand.

Although Stormwind was destroyed at the time, it had a smooth journey in the following decades without any major disasters.

Jess, of course, would not just sit back and wait for his fate. However, his parents had been living in Lordaeron their whole lives and were unwilling to move, and Jess could not possibly convince them of the events of fifteen years from now that he heard about in another world.

Fortunately, they did not oppose young Jess's adventure outside.

Stormwind city was destroyed in the war, and King Terenas II of Lordaeron spent a fortune to hire craftsmen and young labor from all kingdoms, even from the dwarves, to help the House of Wrynn rebuild their homeland.

Jess, who was just fifteen years old at the time, followed the trend and went to the city of hope in the game world, the future capital of the Alliance, with returning refugees from the Stormwind kingdom.

Now, like an icebreaker, Grit pushed his way through the crowd with his strong body, followed by Jess, and laughed loudly.

He made no attempt to conceal his excitement. After all, Alleria Windrunner, the legendary battle master, was his ideal type of woman—a warrior who embodied both beauty and strength. Unlike those boastful, ostentatious elves, she was a true hero who could single-handedly fight hundreds of enemies.

Jess was also excited because this was the first famous World of Warcraft character he could see with his own eyes.

In the past seventeen years of his life, those familiar names were only heard from the mouths of his parents, other villagers, and city dwellers, or from messages sent back from the battlefield.

He has never personally met or even seen any of them.

Keeping up with Grit, Jess came out of the inner gate and into the Valley of Heroes—of course, it wasn't called the Valley of Heroes yet.

The Valley of Heroes, devoid of statues, was in a shambles. Years of continuous warfare left it desolate. Warlocks and red dragons have turned the once lush riverbanks into a mess.

Old soldiers who had experienced the Orc Wars were parading across the newly constructed city gate bridge. Their armor was still marked with scorches and dents, and the weapons and shields they held bore the emblems of different kingdoms.

Their destination was several thousand li away in the southeast, the route by which the orcs descended upon this world from another world—the Dark Portal.

General Turalyon was at the Watchtower, assembling troops, preparing to cross the Dark Portal built by the orcs and go straight to the orcs' homeland, Draenor, to end the threat of the Orc Horde to this planet—Azeroth—once and for all.

However, among the crowd watching the army depart, Jess was the only one who knew their fate.

In a few years, Ner'zhul, the leader of the orcs, would initiate the magic that would destroy Draenor. The whole planet would fall apart. To prevent this catastrophe from reaching Azeroth, the Expeditionary Army voluntarily destroyed the Dark Portal on the Draenor side.

From then on, all members of the Expeditionary Army were stranded in that dying world.

To honor the sacrifices of the Expeditionary Forces, the king of Stormwind ordered that statues of the heroes of the Expedition—the Sons of Lothar—be erected on this bridge, and named this place the Valley of Heroes.

"Where's Alleria? I want to see Alleria Windrunner!" Grit didn't care about the solemn atmosphere around him. After all, fighting against a world-destroying enemy is the highest romantic notion for a dwarf like himself.

Looking at the dwarven warriors from Aerie Peak who had rushed here to join the parade, he was full of admiration rather than worry.

"If it wasn't for the troll bat that blinded one of my eyes, I'd have followed Kurdran Wildhammer right through the Dark Portal," he said in Common language with a dwarven accent. "By then, I'd have been the close comrade-in-arms of General Alleria, and who knows if I, not your General Turalyon, could have won her heart in the end."

Hearing his words, the disapproving looks from the nearby citizens quietly retracted.