World of Warcraft London Server Opens, The Scourge Invasion

Across the way, Malekith felt nothing unusual about the "Aether" he had just inhaled. After all, having not touched it for millennia, it was normal for his senses to be somewhat off.

Having absorbed the Aether, Malekith dropped Suye with a look of utter satisfaction, turned around, and walked straight toward his spaceship without looking back.

Behind him, Algrim and the dark elves followed closely.

Yet, after landing, Suye did not step forward to stop them. Instead, remotely controlling his Gundam via a clone, he engaged in a fierce battle with the spaceship hovering in the sky.

The cannons on the Gundam's shoulders continuously pounded the spaceship's energy shield, while in its hands, a fifty-meter-long ship-cutting blade materialized out of nowhere.

Then, that massive blade spun at dizzying speeds like a propeller, making the spaceship's protective shield shriek violently and spray showers of sparks.

The Bifrost bridge below was sheared clean through like a fragile cucumber. The small observatory at its front had already exploded, plunging entirely into the swirling vortex beneath Asgard and vanishing from sight.

Whether it would eventually be ground into dust by the whirlpool or hurled into some interstellar scrap heap like Sakaar remained unknown.

With the destruction of the Bifrost, Malekith found that their path back to the spaceship was blocked.

The small razor-fighters that had descended from the cruciform ship to welcome them were blasted out of the air by countless floating "Dragoons" swarming from behind the Gundam.

"Bastards!"

Malekith let out an angry snort. Turning back, he saw that Suye had already retreated a hundred meters or so, while the giant green brute in the distance was charging furiously in their direction.

"Your Majesty, let me go crush that thing!" Algrim said in a muffled, rumbling voice.

Malekith shook his head. With a flick of his hand, a thick, viscous red substance emerged from his palm, enveloping him and his subordinates as they bolted toward the side of the Bifrost.

The Convergence was underway, and the alignment of the Nine Realms had begun to connect their spaces to a certain extent. Within Asgard itself, there were naturally hidden pathways leading to other worlds—shortcuts that usually went unnoticed.

Only someone as restless and magically gifted as Loki would ever discover them.

Now, with the advent of the Convergence, these passages had become much more prominent than before, and having mastered the Aether, Malekith keenly sensed one of them.

"Let's go!"

Malekith no longer bothered trying to reach the spaceship. With the Aether in his grasp, whether the ship survived was entirely irrelevant.

Leading his men forward, they plunged headfirst into the spatial portal, instantly emerging in their homeworld, Svartalfheim, before using it as a stepping stone to teleport once more.

When they materialized again, the entire group of a few dozen individuals had arrived in London, Earth.

This was the exact location on Earth where the Nine Realms intersected during the Convergence.

Though Malekith now had only a few dozen followers left by his side, as long as he could manufacture darkness and shroud all of Midgard in it, the realm would return to the eternal gloom they desired.

And within that darkness, countless new dark elves would be born, following Malekith to conquer the Nine Realms and plunge the entire universe back into the dark.

So long as no one could stop him from spreading the darkness, that was all that mattered.

In London, as Malekith began utilizing the "Aether" to spread the darkness, he was astonished to find that Midgard was precisely as he had imagined.

Though it no longer looked as desolate as it had thousands of years ago—with far more buildings and a vastly greater population—

No matter how much it had changed, these people remained reassuringly weak.

Even without the Aether, a flick of his finger could easily crush several of them to death.

Reassured, the light-blocking black fog generated by the "Aether" began to creep outward from Cambridge University across the entire city.

Yet, when the dark smoke had spread over a fraction of the city, and Malekith prepared to relish the ignorant, foolish panic and screams of the Midgardians, he was shocked to discover that the surrounding people were completely ignoring the fog.

Malekith looked up at the sky. The dark mist had entirely blotted out the sun, reducing visibility to less than ten meters.

The black fog of his memories wasn't like this; it should have instantly swallowed all light, making the very concept of "visibility" nonexistent.

Still, millennia had passed, and since this was Midgard—an unfamiliar battlefield—such a simplified effect theoretically wasn't a major issue.

The real question was: why were the people on the street acting like it was no big deal?

Did they not realize what would happen once such a black mist engulfed the entire world?

Without light, plants could not grow to produce food, and surface temperatures would plummet rapidly. By then, this place would become a pitch-black, lifeless wasteland.

As expected of the clueless Midgardians—did they not feel the approach of death until a blade was pressed directly against their throats?

"Since that is how you want it, die foolishly in your ignorance!"

Malekith grunted, abandoning the thought and driving the Aether to further expand the boundaries of the dark fog.

As the mist spread, all of London was soon swallowed up.

Yet, what puzzled Malekith somewhat was that as the fog expanded, its density seemed to decrease slightly, increasing the visibility around him to roughly twenty meters.

"Why is this happening?"

Malekith finally sensed that something was amiss. Once the "Aether" entered his body, it still felt like the Aether, but why was the resulting power manifesting incorrectly once released?

Where on earth had things gone wrong?

While Malekith was racking his brains in utter bewilderment, all the meteorological observatories and news media outlets across London were thrown into a frantic bustle.

"The largest fog in recorded history has descended upon London!"

"A once-in-a-century heavy fog has struck, resulting in extremely low visibility and severely impacting travel safety. Citizens are advised to take precautions!"

"A black fog has appeared in downtown London, bearing a striking resemblance to the destructive industrial manufacturing era of a century ago. Environmental activists are calling on the government to actively address environmental issues!"

"Due to the fog, dozens of flights have been cancelled, but train stations in neighboring cities are packed with tourists eager to travel to London to witness the foggy scenery. Now, let us follow the camera to see just how magical this sudden fog really is!"

"Hey folks, I am currently in the suburbs of London. As you can see behind me, London is shrouded in a thick black mist. The fog is still spreading, though the edges have become quite thin, and many people are taking pictures!"

Malekith never could have imagined that after five thousand years of meticulous planning, of hiding and scraping by just to draw breath, when he finally held the Aether in his hand and sought to exact his revenge on the world, this would be the outcome.

Far from panicking the citizens of London, the fog had left many of them overwhelmingly excited.

London was already prone to heavy mists due to its climate, and coupled with the rampant industrial activities of earlier centuries, decades ago it had even suffered major incidents resulting in mass casualties due to smog.

Now, the black fog had returned, yet it lacked any obvious toxicity to the human respiratory tract. Instead, it gave people a sense of stepping back into that era with nostalgia and romanticism, experiencing the historical atmosphere of the Industrial Revolution firsthand.

The excitement of the public and tourists was therefore entirely natural.

Yet in Malekith's eyes, logically speaking, things should not have been this way. With the Aether's power, let alone a single city like London, it should have been able to shroud all of England in black fog within minutes.

And it should have been the kind of absolute, zero-visibility fog that resembled liquid darkness.

Yet here, at the epicenter of the black fog, Malekith exerted every ounce of strength he had, failing to make the mist any denser; its spread remained strictly confined to the city of London.

"What on earth is going on? After thousands of years, has the Aether's power diminished, or has my affinity with it decreased, preventing me from fully unleashing its might?"

Just as Malekith wrestled with his doubts, a sudden flash of inspiration struck him, suggesting an entirely new application for the Aether.

The Aether could manufacture darkness, but it wasn't limited *only* to manufacturing darkness—it was simply that Malekith *wanted* to use it to manufacture darkness.

In other words, if Malekith wanted to use it for something else, it could certainly do so.

Since his ability to create darkness was currently glitching out, why not change his mindset and try something else?

Previously, Malekith had never considered this direction; or rather, his imagination had been constrained.

Now that his perspective had broadened, Malekith suddenly felt as though he had lived his past thousands of years in vain.

With a casual wave of his hand, black outlines abruptly formed within the mist before him, rapidly solidifying into a nearly two-meter-tall skeleton.

This skeleton shared a human-like shape, but its bones were much thicker than a human's, and its arms were disproportionately long.

Most importantly, clutched in its hand was a bone blade over a meter long, crafted from the remains of some unknown creature.

At Malekith's gesture, the skeleton marched straight toward a parked car on the roadside, raised its bone blade, and brought it down with a heavy chop.

Boom!

The bone blade sliced through the sheet metal and steel frame of the car like a hot knife through butter, splitting it right down the middle.

Only the length of the bone blade had limited the skeleton's potential; otherwise, a single strike would undoubtedly have cleaved the car completely in two.

This formidable destructive power made Malekith's eyes light up.

If he had thought of this thousands of years ago—if he could create such powerful skeletal warriors—why would he have needed cursed warriors or forced his dark elf brethren to risk their lives?

He could simply have channeled the Aether to unleash an undead army upon the Asgardians, showing them the true meaning of a Scourge. Wouldn't that have been wonderful?

Instead, countless dark elves had died in vain, only for them to foolishly crawl into hiding and sleep for ages.

Fortunately, it was never too late for a good meal.

Now that he had discovered this, starting with Midgard, Malekith prepared to let the entire Nine Realms experience what a true undead calamity felt like.

Malekith raised both hands, reigning over the world like a king.

Before him, countless skeletons crawled out from the black mist, emerged from the ground, dropped from rooftops, stepped out of walls, and even materialized from inside cars.

In mere moments, the entire plaza was flooded with an army of the undead.

By visual estimate, their numbers numbered no less than tens of thousands.

"This..."

Beside him, Algrim looked at the tens of thousands of skeletal warriors, his composure faltering.

Since thousands of years ago, Algrim had been Malekith's most relied-upon confidant, his right hand, and his steadfast supporter. Together, they had endured countless bitter, desolate nights following their defeat.

Algrim had believed he was Malekith's last resort; without him, Malekith would be nothing more than a stray dog, with never a hope of rising again.

That was why, when Malekith needed a cursed warrior, Algrim had stepped forward without a moment's hesitation.

And when Malekith had pressed his head and told him his sacrifice would not be in vain, how desperately Algrim had wanted to embrace the past.

The relationship between Malekith and Algrim was not entirely without precedent.

In *Eternals*, that sole chubby member—the idiot who knelt in the mud for the fat man and the little boy—wasn't he also paired with a man, even adopting a little kid as his son?

This was simply popular culture, politically correct and proper. We are merely discussing the matter objectively, neither praising nor slandering.

Since that idiot chubby fellow could build a family with a man, why couldn't Algrim have a romance with Malekith?

Besides, Algrim was an old dark elf too; it was political correctness personified.

Yet now, Algrim felt that his youth had finally come to an end.

He was transforming into a cursed warrior, destined to die, while Malekith had regained immense power alongside even more formidable helpers. It was time for him to retire gracefully.

"Your Majesty, I..."

Algrim stepped close to Malekith, saying in a low voice, "I may not be able to continue accompanying..."

Before he could finish, Malekith interrupted him directly.

"No, Algrim, we are nowhere near ready to part ways!"

As he spoke, red radiance surged across Malekith's body once more.

Beneath him, a giant skeletal goat with two long horns materialized, lifting him onto its back.

In Malekith's hand, a sharp-styled greatsword appeared, radiating a chilling pale-blue glow that made its freezing aura palpable from afar.

Malekith's braided white hair came undone at some point, draped casually across his back.

Viewed from afar, he exuded an overwhelming, tyrannical aura.

Malekith did not stop there; he swept his hand, directing the red light toward Algrim standing beside him.

Algrim felt his stature shoot up once more, sharp goat-like horns sprouted from his head, and a pair of massive bat wings burst from his back.

At that moment, Algrim felt as though he had transformed into a legendary demon.

Meanwhile, the dozen or so dark elves who had accompanied Malekith to London also grew sharp horns and massive canine fangs, sprouting pairs of wings from their backs while their skin turned the color of stone.

"From this moment on!"

"The age of the dark elves is a thing of the past!"

"I, Death Knight Malekith, alongside Fear Lord Algrim, leading our gargoyles and undead army, shall bring darkness and calamity to this world. We are the Undead Scourge!"

At this juncture, the dark elves had not transformed into their distant cousins the night elves, but had instead morphed into an entirely new race: the Undead.

Yet all of this was planned and manipulated by Suye, brought to life through the "Aether."

Indeed, the "Aether" that Malekith had ripped out of Suye's body—the one enclosed in quotation marks—was not the genuine article.

Rather, the moment the Aether was torn away, Suye had combined the Reality Stone with *Unlimited Blade Works* to forge a semi-finished replica of the Aether.

This semi-finished "Aether" lacked the overwhelming capabilities of the original, having been simply programmed with the power to manifest an undead calamity.

Through telepathy, the moment the Aether left his body, Suye had planted a false memory in Malekith's mind.

And thus, Malekith had rushed to London, using the fake "Aether" to generate a black fog resembling a war zone's fog of war—one with extremely low visibility—while triggering the full undead transformation of all the dark elves.

However, because it was purely a manifestation of the Reality Stone's power, the skeletal warriors created moments ago possessed no souls and could not act autonomously; they required Malekith's direct command and operation to move.

At the same time, they could not level up, possessing fixed stats, and any losses sustained would require Malekith to expend the "Aether's" energy to replenish them.

The fake "Aether" had limited energy; once used up, it was gone.

Furthermore, the alterations to Malekith and Algrim were purely cosmetic; they had not actually acquired the true powers of a Death Knight or a Fear Lord.

Even so, this was more than enough for them to go on a wild rampage.

Consider this a gift from Suye to London. Since they wanted to play, they might as well play big.

An undead calamity—was this prank large enough?

The plot of *World of Warcraft* was about to unfold. For now, it was only the London server; NATO nations needn't rush, as servers for every country would be opening shortly.

Especially the Americans—for the next server, should he choose San Francisco or Chicago?