Soul power: 86. Moral integrity: 71%.
This was Duke's tragic little status bar now, and boy did it sting like a paper cut dipped in lemon juice.
He accepted it. Bitterly. Helplessly. Like a man biting into what he thought was a chocolate chip cookie, only to realize it's raisins. Death had become such a casual affair for him lately, he almost started ranking them: "Death #6 was more painful, but Death #9 had better visual effects." But now that his head wasn't spinning from eleven consecutive deaths like a cursed Beyblade, the existential weight of it all finally hit him like a brick to the soul.
And the worst part? He had to die one more time. One more. Just for optics.
All to keep his secret weapon under wraps.
"Curse you, Sargeras! You filthy oversized flaming satyr with a sword complex!" he raged internally. "Doesn't even matter if this is your fault. I'm blaming you anyway, you void-roasted meatball!"
But as he sifted through his system logs, his frustration took a nosedive into pure existential horror.
"Due to dying three times in a short period of time, you have triggered a soul debuff: Wrath, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Spell power +20%, attack speed +30%, dodge rate = 0, defense -30%, willpower +200%. Immune to most mental magic."
Oh. That's just wonderful. He was now an angry, fragile glass cannon with the mental fortitude of a titan and the armor of wet bread.
But wait, there's more!
"You have triggered the berserk passive: Death Cage – Target designated: HOGG. Until the target is destroyed, you will continuously revive. Health and mana -10% per death. Spell power and attack speed +10% per death. Effect ends upon target's death or total humanity loss."
Duke stared blankly. His brain short-circuited for a full three seconds.
"Oh. Great. I'm not a wizard anymore. I'm a magic-fueled meat piñata with anger management issues and a death wish."
This wasn't a death loop. This was a magical gambling addiction. The only chips were his soul, and he was down to his last handful.
One path led to redemption. The other? Well, let's just say, lichdom looked better than this.
His soul might not rot, but his moral compass was starting to point straight to "Chaotic Gremlin."
He was one point of moral integrity away from giggling maniacally while kicking orphans off docks.
Makaro and his crew, having survived thanks to Duke's repeated suicides-and-resurrections, now stood awkwardly in the aura of Duke's passive "Creepy Vibes." Though Duke claimed his power was just ancestral magic, the subtle glare in his eyes, the way he smiled just a second too long, made them wonder if that magic came from grandma or something older.
They cleaned the battlefield in eerie silence. The storm of last night was over, but the atmosphere felt thicker than a bowl of cold porridge. The jackals frozen by Duke's earlier Ice Storm had thawed enough to stink. Burying was a luxury they couldn't afford. Vultures were already lining up like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.
At dawn, Makaro approached with a deferential bow. "Sir Edmund. Stormwind pays ten silver per gnoll claw. A monster like Hogg might fetch more, especially since five towns in Elwynn Forest have individual bounties on his head and paws. What are your orders?"
Duke narrowed his eyes, exuding the aura of someone who had just remembered he hadn't killed enough people before breakfast.
"What do you think we should do?" he asked, voice low and sharp.
Makaro nearly swallowed his tongue. He'd rehearsed this.
"If you would allow me, I'll leave my son here and take two men to deliver the remains to Stormwind. I promise, within a week, the bards will sing your name from Goldshire to Redridge."
Leaving his son behind was a subtle, old-school gesture: the mercenary version of handing someone the keys to your house while saying, "Please don't rob me."
Duke barely cared. He was calculating something else.
If killing regular mobs restored 1 point of integrity... what about Hogg? Demonized Hogg?
No matter. Even one point was still better than nothing. Mosquitoes may be small, but they still make soup if you squish enough.
"Makaro," Duke finally said. "You're no longer my guards. I have a mission for you."
Makaro straightened like someone hearing the word "promotion" for the first time.
"A few days ago, an outpost was attacked by Hogg's pack. Take the bounty – but give half of it to the victims' families. Widows. Orphans. Survivors. Make sure people know who sent it."
Makaro's eyes widened, then softened.
"Wait for me in Moonbrook. Two weeks, give or take."
Duke had already gathered intel. Moonbrook was still a functioning border town, not the Defias-infested ghost town it would become. A thousand citizens, a real baron, a small militia. A good place to vanish into.
But Duke wasn't headed there yet.
His real destination? The salt-crusted shoreline to the north.
Because on that coast... there were murlocs.
Lots and lots of murlocs.
And Duke had a score to settle, spells to test, and maybe – just maybe – a few more points of moral integrity to scrape back before he went full demon king.
For now, he was still Duke.
But the road ahead was long, the winds howled louder, and the gnolls weren't the only monsters waking up in the dark.
Time to respawn. Again.