Shadow Trails in Azeroth

At night on the reef, Blake randomly found a chair inlaid with gems and skulls in the treasure mountain, leaned on it, and looked at the locked diary in his hand.

This thing looks very old at first glance. If you touch it with your fingers, the cover of the diary will break open if you touch it with more force.

It has been covered up by Zemlan for thousands of years, and it has only been revealed to the light in the past two days. Zemlan, who was so crazy before his death, actually called this thing his real "treasure".

This shows that this thing is really a bit "material".

The pirate touched the rough cover of the notebook, his heart pounding. He seemed to be able to predict what kind of secrets were described in this thing.

But first we need to open the lock on the diary.

Since there is a lock, there must be a corresponding key.

Blake stroked the keyhole. After a few seconds, he raised his head, put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled hard.

The special skills given by the Pirate King's suit were activated, and the undead eagle named Old Bone Eater flapped its wings, appeared silently in the dark, and stood on Blake's shoulders.

"That key around your neck, I need it."

Blake put the shabby diary in his hand and raised it in the air. When Old Bonesaw saw the diary, he immediately raised his head and screamed a few times. In its dark eye sockets, the sparkling soul fire also danced a few strands.

This time Black reached for the rusty key hanging around his neck, and Old Bonechewer didn't peck him with his beak.

The pirate took the key off and inserted it into the lock of the diary. With a slight twist, the diary that had been sealed for thousands of years was opened, and a smell of decay came to him.

The pirates could see clearly the words on the diary thanks to the jeweled aura emanating from the treasures piled up on Treasure Island, and the first sentence written on the first page made Blake raise his eyebrows:

"I don't want to be a mortal anymore!"

"really."

Blake was delighted.

During the previous fight with the Zandalari Pirate King, whose strength had seriously declined, Black noticed that Zemlan had a mythical class in him.

That guy is a Loa who failed in his promotion.

The diary left by Zemlan should be a description of his pursuit of the path to the gods.

He read on.

The first page uses a lot of space to describe Zemlan's own mental journey in making this decision. It is more like his summary of the first half of his life:

“Today, one of my captains died.

He did not die from robbery, nor from fighting, but from old age at the end of his life.

For a pirate, this was a rare blessing.

We buried him at sea, and everyone on the ship was celebrating him. My dishonest first mate, Gaboa, even shed tears hypocritically.

But I don't think this is a blessing.

He is the most brutal subordinate of the Pirate King of Zandalari. He is a famous pirate in this area. His name is used by the nobles of Zuldazar to scare their unruly brats.

He accompanied me through the golden city of Zuldazar.

Join me in chasing the remnants of the Naga in the maelstrom and looting their cities.

He also worked with me to intercept the group of strange elves who had left Kalimdor and headed to reclaim the wilderness.

But he died.

None of this makes sense anymore.

As his captain, I would die too.

Although I can live a long time as a troll, death is still closer every day, and Bwonsamdi will eventually take me, just as he took my men today.

ah!

I'm pretty much the most powerful pirate in the world.

I sit on wealth that is coveted by countless people, and those who want to kill me can line up from the shores of Vol'dun Desert to the dark heart of Nazmir.

I am sitting on extraordinary power, I enjoy worldly power, I conquer the sea.

Whether it's the Golden King of Zandalar or the Moon Priest of Kalimdor, my name will appear in their palaces and echo in their every nightmare.

I bullied their people, stole their treasures, burned their cities, and there was nothing they could do against me.

Unfortunately, the more this happens, the more emptiness I feel.

An urgency.

I can't get any closer!

Mortal struggle has its limits. As a mortal, I have too many limitations.

There are so many places in this world, so many secrets, so many treasures!

What's in the southernmost desert of Kalimdor? What secrets lie in the fog of the South China Sea? Why did Daza, the golden king of Zandalar, take his people away from the glorious Zul Nazman countless years ago?

I'm just a pirate, I'm not a scholar.

But these questions still make me sleepy and sleepless. Their existence means that the world is not what I see in my eyes! They were laughing at me, just an ant lying on the ground looking up at the sky.

Say I have never seen the reality of this world.

I have traveled outside those secrets several times, but I have never been able to set foot inside.

You can see it, but you can't touch it.

This is just too uncomfortable.

Those ordinary gadgets with golden light, the blood light rising from the tip of the knife, the burning city and the wails of the weak can no longer make me feel satisfied.

I must find those answers! I had to go to another level to make a difference!

Not just against death

I must find a way to become a god! "

That’s the end of the first page.

Blake shook his head. He looked at the questions posed on the weathered animal skin paper. The answers to these secrets that Zemran could not fathom when he was still young all had answers in his mind.

But he won't choose to say it.

He turned to the second page.

Gaboa, whose body was shattered next to him, was recovering and yelling, while the little fish man and the old Bone-Eating Eagle were already wrestling with each other. In the sea not far away, the shadows of three ships belonging to Blake could be vaguely seen.

They are sailing this way.

But none of the noise disturbed Blake's reading of the diary.

Zemran does not write a diary every day, and there is no such boring thing as a captain to be punished or a stupid enemy to be cursed in the diary.

This crooked pirate king would only write down important things on it.

"I talked with the priests of Shadra, the goddess of conspiracy, and bought from them a way to steal the power of Loa.

I specially found a pile of garbage to please Old Garni, the patron saint of secrets, and learned some secrets from him that only the Loa gods would share.

I even went deep into the ruins of Nazmir and discussed with the blood troll barbarians the blood god they believed in.

They generously taught me how to use blood magic to seduce a god into corruption.

I went to Zulragub to visit the remnants of the once glorious Gurubashi Empire. In order to stay strong, those fools actually believed in an evil god!

It really made me, a rude pirate, laugh out loud.

I have not traveled thousands of miles to visit the territory of the forest trolls.

The Amani Empire is growing stronger, and they are attacking the group of elves who migrated to that wild land, but I am not interested in war. What I am looking for is the weakness of the Loa they believe in.

But it turns out that those bird gods are weak and capricious. They are not worthy of belief and should be left to the stupid Amani tribe!

It's been a long journey.

But it gave me a lot of inspiration and I learned a lot of knowledge.

It is easy to become a purely spiritual Loa.

Many trolls before me have been 'given' this honor, but that's not what I want, it means abandoning my body.

Like a ghost, attached to a powerful Loa being.

But a true Loa god should be composed of two parts: soul and body.

The soul is immortal and the body is immortal.

The two must become one before I can transcend the mundane and reach the divine realm I long for.

I had also planned to go to the cold north to visit the frost trolls who were expelled from Zandalar because of their rudeness and savagery.

But during the trip, I received a secret message.

I must return to Zandalar, to the land of my birth. Subtle divisions have occurred among the snake people in the Vol'dun Desert, and the temple of Setaris guarded by them is becoming increasingly empty.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has been presented to me.

In that temple is buried the god of the snake people, the powerful mysterious mistress Setaris. She is dead, but I know that the snake people have been trying to resurrect their god.

Before his death, Seitaris had left a glimmer of hope for his own resurrection.

Her hope will also become my hope. "

Blake blinked as he read this.

He probably anticipated what problems the confident Zemlan would encounter next.

Although the pirate king Zemlan was well prepared, he still underestimated what a Loa god could do. He turned to the next page, and it was as he expected:

“Hell! She can still feel it!

Even though she has been dead for thousands of years, she can still sense what is happening in the material world! The egg containing the divine body of Loa was less than ten meters in front of me!

But I can't get closer to it.

The angry spirit of Cetaris cursed me from the other world.

She sent down a bolt of lightning that wiped out all my preparations.

Her followers discovered my infiltration.

Snake people are crazy!

All the snakemen in Voldun gathered together and launched an attack on my port. They were dominated by the fanaticism for the gods and attacked my men as if they were not afraid of death.

I suffered heavy losses.

Three snake-men prophets have prepared a witchcraft that will destroy the world. My fleet will be finished today.

I heard Bwonsamdi laugh.

I know that that nasty Death has been paying attention to my actions.

It has been waiting for this moment, expecting me to be in a desperate situation, bowing my head and praying to him. It must have prepared a deal for me, but I will not let it go.

My ritual is ready, just a hint of magic to activate it.

Although it is frustrating to be unable to obtain a godly body, under the current circumstances, if I can complete the promotion of the soul, I can still keep my fleet, my power and my wealth.

All I'm missing is a ball of magic from the gods.

Whether it's from Setaris or Bwonsamdi, as long as there's a ball of mojo.

Once I become a loa, not even Bwonsamdi can take me away.

At this moment, I want to agree to Bwonsamdi's deal, trick him into getting the magic spirit, and then complete my journey to becoming a god.

It's simple, it's not difficult.

As long as I cheat death."

This ends the diary, which is not very long.

But there is a lingering flavor at the end.

After Zemran's plan to seize the power of the serpent god failed, in a moment of desperation, he chose to deceive Bwonsamdi. Like a gambler who lost everything and finally made a desperate move.

Zemran's failed promotion proves that Bwonsamdi is not that easy to trick.

The things recorded in this diary also prove that Bwonsamdi cast a curse on this land not just because Zemlan failed to complete the transaction.

This represents Bwonsamdi's warning to those who would overestimate their own power and seek its power.

"Zemlan failed because he underestimated the difficulty of this matter. It's not that there was anything wrong with the ritual itself, he just chose the wrong target."

Blake turned the page to the next page in the diary. Zemran generously left behind the rituals and methods he had used to capture divine power, which made Blake feel like a treasure.

He stroked the weathered animal skin paper in front of him and said:

"Having targeted powerful Loa like Seitaris from the beginning, and then looking for someone like Bwonsamdi to replace him after the failure, Zemlan's adventurous plan was doomed to fail from the beginning.

His ambition was so great that he forgot to look at his feet, and that's when he stumbled.

If it were me doing it, I would."

He stood up from the chair on Treasure Mountain and looked towards the Wharton Desert. He whispered:

"There, there is a body of a powerful Loa that is being gestated. And this world is full of Loa that trolls believe in, and those creatures that transcend death are everywhere.

I just need to be patient and cautious, and learn enough experience from the two failed paths to becoming a god, Gul'dan and Zemlan.

Well, that doesn’t sound difficult at all. "