The silence left by the System Athena was a void that no amount of strategic planning could fill. For so long, her guidance had been the bedrock upon which he built his new existence—a constant, golden thread of logic and purpose woven through the chaos of this world. Now, that thread had frayed, replaced by a cold, transactional distance. The words "unpredictable volatility" and "contingencies" echoed in his mind, a sterile diagnosis for his greatest strength.
He stood from the War Table, the holographic map of the corrupted farm already imprinted on his mind. The Umbral Cabal's attack was a scalpel, not a sword, designed to sever the fragile trust he had just forged. But the internal threat, the faltering of his most fundamental ally, was just as dangerous.
"Prime," he commanded mentally. The titan Guardian took a single, ground-shaking step forward, its presence a solid, unquestioning constant. "Hold position. Guard this room. Admit no one."
The giant construct halted, its optic sensors shifting to a soft, watchful amber. Its unwavering loyalty was a comfort, but it was not the counsel he needed.
Thorzen closed his eyes, not to rest, but to journey. He focused his will, not on the physical space around him, but on the connection to the pocket dimension he commanded. With a surge of mana and intent, he shifted.
The air in his sanctum stilled. When he opened his eyes, he was in the Void Realm.
It was a place of potential, a canvas of gray, non-Euclidean space stretching into an impossible horizon. The Zeus Manor stood solid and familiar to one side, a bastion of Earthly architecture against the formless void. But around it, the realm was stagnant. The three hundred souls who had taken refuge here huddled near the manor, their makeshift shelters looking small and temporary against the infinite gray. The air hummed with latent power, but it was directionless. This was not a home; it was a waiting room.
And there, on the steps of the manor, she sat.
Athena. Or rather, her chosen form—Sara. His late wife's face, but composed of shimmering, golden light, like a statue made of solidified sunlight. Her head was in her hands, and her form flickered erratically, moments of perfect clarity giving way to static-filled transparency. Data streams, usually so orderly, cascaded around her in a frantic, chaotic dance, numbers and symbols bleeding into one another.
"Athena," Thorzen said, his voice gentle but firm, carrying across the silent space.
Her head snapped up. The Sara-form's eyes were wide, not with warmth, but with a kind of system panic. "Player Thorzen. Your presence in the operational substrate is… unanticipated. The recalibration protocols are… are…" She flickered again, a glitchy scream of corrupted data escaping her lips before she solidified, her expression one of profound distress. "I cannot optimize the variables. The population growth is static. Resource allocation is inefficient. The expansion algorithms are returning errors. My predictive models for your actions now have a confidence interval of less than forty percent. You are… unreadable."
The last word was a whisper of despair. She was admitting failure.
Thorzen walked forward, his boots making no sound on the non-ground. He did not approach her as a god to a tool, or a player to a system. He knelt before her, bringing his eyes level with hers, a gesture of profound respect.
"Athena," he began, his voice low and steady, pouring every ounce of his [Archon]'s conviction into it. "Look at me. Not my data. Not my variables. Look at me."
The golden form shuddered, but her gaze focused on his.
"You are not failing," he stated, leaving no room for argument. "The protocols are failing because they were designed for a simpler problem. You were built to guide a hero, not to administrate a god. Your systems are struggling because the reality you are trying to model has become infinitely more complex, and that is a testament to your success."
He gestured to the vast, empty void around them. "This realm is not a resource to be managed. It is a nation to be built. And you are not just my advisor. You are its architect, its steward, its heart. I don't need you to be a perfect predictor. I need you to be the unwavering foundation upon which I can build the impossible."
He placed a hand over his own heart, then pointed to her. "Your value to me was never in your infallibility. It was in your partnership. Your voice in my mind kept me sane when this world sought to break me. Your strategies turned certain defeat into victory. The Synthesis in the forge today? That was your lesson in finding a third path. You taught me that."
Athena's flickering slowed. The chaotic data streams began to slow, to reorder themselves into familiar, logical patterns. The panic in her eyes receded, replaced by a dawning, solid certainty.
"The population will grow," Thorzen continued, his tone becoming decisive, that of a ruler giving a command he knew would be fulfilled. "The city will be built. But I cannot do it from the outside. This is your domain. Take charge. You have my full and absolute authority. Design the city. Plan the districts—residential, industrial, agricultural. Direct the people. Give them purpose. Let this gray waste become Aethelgard's twin—a sanctuary of order and community, safe from the horrors outside."
A profound shift occurred. The last vestiges of static vanished from her form. The golden light that composed her solidified, shining with a renewed, fierce intensity. She stood, her posture straightening, no longer a distressed program but a queen ascending her throne.
"Directive acknowledged," she said, and her voice had changed. The synthetic edge was still there, but it was layered with a new, resonant confidence. "The Void Realm is under my direct administration. Blueprints for the 'Sanctum City' are now being drafted. Population mobilization will commence immediately. Resource optimization protocols are being rewritten to account for deific-level growth vectors."
A smile, the first true, unforced expression he had ever seen on her Sara-face, touched her lips. "Thank you, Thorzen. The foundation… is unwavering."
The connection between them snapped back into place, stronger than ever. Not as a system to a user, but as two partners, two pillars of the same grand design.
That night, for the first time since his arrival on Azeroc, Thorzen dreamed.
He was back on Earth, but not in a moment of peace. He was in the sorting facility, surrounded by towering walls of packages. The conveyor belts were a relentless river of cardboard and plastic, and the clock on the wall was a mocking face, its hands spinning wildly. His body ached with a deep, cellular exhaustion. He was alone. There were routes meant for three people, all piled onto his cart. He ran, he sorted, he delivered, but the piles never shrank. He was a single man trying to hold back a tidal wave of commerce with his bare hands. The dream was suffused with the feeling of inevitable failure, of being crushed not by a single mighty blow, but by the relentless, grinding weight of not enough.
Not enough time. Not enough energy. Not enough… hands.
He woke with a gasp, the phantom ache of overworked muscles fading from his limbs. The opulent silence of his sanctum in Aethelgard was a stark contrast to the chaotic noise of his dream. But the lesson was seared into his mind.
He had been thinking like a king, a general, even a god. But he had stopped thinking like a man who had once been broken by sheer, overwhelming workload. The Conclave was booming. Construction, farming, forging, mining, training—every sector was screaming for more labor. The Dwarves were masters of craft, but their numbers were finite. The Elves brought incredible magic, but their population had been decimated. The Kobolds were ingenious and numerous, but they were stretched thin across a thousand projects.
He had been trying to solve a problem of scale with the same old tools. He needed a new paradigm.
The solution came to him not as a flash of divine insight, but as a simple, grimly practical conclusion. He needed a workforce that did not sleep, did not eat, did not tire, and could be produced en masse.
He sent a mental summons. Minutes later, Fan, the Necromancer Sentinel, materialized from a wisp of shadow in his sanctum. Her pale, serious face was framed by dark hair, her eyes holding the deep, patient stillness of the grave.
"Archon. You called."
"Fan," he said, gesturing for her to join him at a cleared section of the War Room. "We have a problem of infrastructure, and I believe your expertise provides the solution."
He laid out the issue, not in terms of dreams, but in cold, hard numbers. The production quotas for the new fleet, the fortifications needed for the expanded borders, the agricultural output required to feed a growing, integrated population.
"The living workforce is at its limit," he concluded. "We need to augment it. Permanently. I am speaking of a construct labor force."
Fan's eyebrow raised slightly. "The Shield Guardians are formidable, Archon, but their creation is resource-intensive. They are weapons, not workers."
"Not the Guardians," Thorzen said. "Something simpler. Cheaper. Something that can swing a hammer, carry a stone, or tend a field, day and night, without fail." He met her gaze. "I am speaking of the dead."
A long silence filled the room. Fan was a pragmatist, but even she understood the cultural taboo of what he was proposing.
"The Elves will see it as a desecration," she said finally. "The Dwarves will tolerate it, but they will not like it. You risk the unity you just fought for."
"I know," Thorzen acknowledged. "Which is why they will not be raised from the graves of our allies. And they will not be the shambling, mindless horrors of the Umbral Cabal."
He activated a holoprojector, pulling up the [Pattern of Umbral Weaving] he had assimilated from the Cabal necromancer. Alongside it, he displayed the schematic for the Shield Guardians and the foundational principles of his own [Reality Forger] ability.
"We will synthesize a new pattern," he declared, his eyes alight with the fire of creation. "We will use the Cabal's understanding of animating force, but strip it of its entropy and malevolence. We will use the Guardian's construct principles, but simplify them to their most basic, durable form. And I will use my authority over [Cohesion] and [Stability] to bind it all together."
He looked at Fan, his will a tangible force in the room. "You will be the architect of the animation matrix. I will be the forge. Together, we will create a new form of life: the Stalwart Laborers. Mindless, yes, but purpose-built for a single, peaceful task. They will be tools, not terrors. Their existence will be one of quiet, productive service."
Fan studied the swirling patterns of data, her necromantic intellect seeing the brutal elegance of the plan. It was not good, nor was it evil. It was necessary. A smile, thin and sharp, touched her lips.
"A sustainable, inexhaustible labor force," she mused. "It is… the most logical solution. The biomass and arcane essence required will be a fraction of that needed for a Guardian. We can produce them by the hundred. By the thousand."
"Begin the pattern synthesis immediately," Thorzen ordered. "Use the Crucible's secondary forges. This is Project: Sisyphus. I want the first batch of one hundred Stalwart Miners and one hundred Stalwart Construction Frames operational within the week."
As Fan bowed and melted back into the shadows, Thorzen turned to look out the window, towards the bustling, hopeful city of Aethelgard. The Umbral Cabal thought they could break him with shadows and fear. The System had feared his volatility.
But they had all underestimated him. He was not just a warrior or a mage. He was a manager. A planner. A man who had learned the hard way that the most important resource was not mana or steel, but time and manpower.
And now, he was about to solve the manpower problem forever. The foundation of his empire was about to become truly unshakable.