"Are we looking for some kind of monster?" Vanessa asked, her voice trembling slightly. Even though she was still fighting off the urge to vomit all over the place, she stood up tremblingly, pulled out her dagger, and looked around vigilantly, like a tiny, very green, guardian.
Duke gently stroked Vanessa's head, a reassuring gesture. "A divine creature like the one we're looking for is harmless. Mostly. But... it can also be a huge nuisance, a real pain in the neck."
There were obviously many question marks floating above Vanessa's forehead, like tiny, glowing thought bubbles.
Even after experiencing teleportation more than once, Alleria still couldn't adapt to the bumpy ride that felt like all your internal organs were shaken out, mixed, and then stuffed back into your body like a twisted sausage. It was a truly nauseating experience.
It took them a while to finally have the mood to look around this strange underground city. Gnomeregan was built 172 years ago. This technological wonder city in Dun Morogh had been the capital of the gnomes for generations, a gleaming testament to their ingenuity.
Two years ago, it was obvious that there was another confusion of time and space, a glitch in the Matrix, if you will. Corresponding to the incorrect 21% probability, the major event that should have happened twenty years after the Dark Portal actually happened two years ago: a group of evil stone palate monsters, or cave dwellers, invaded many areas of Dun Morogh, including the dwarf main city.
In order to kill these invaders, the stone palate monsters, which were much larger and stronger than the dwarves, the great craftsman Mekkatorque ordered the emergency radiation tanks in the city to be opened for a desperate, last-ditch fight. While waiting for the stone palate monsters to die or escape, the dwarves were also looking for ways to avoid radiation. Unfortunately, although the stone palate monsters were infected with toxicity after being irradiated, their attacks did not stop or weaken in the slightest. They just got angrier and glowed green.
Those dwarves who were not killed by the radiation were forced to flee, finding refuge in the nearby dwarven city of Ironforge. High Tinker Mekkatorque assembled a council of think tanks to devise a plan to retake their beloved city. Of course, before the dwarves succeeded, this place was a typical lawless place, a wild west of glowing green mutants and angry troggs.
In fact, before Duke crossed over, he remembered that the dwarves' battle was not exactly a resounding success. It couldn't be said that there was no progress, but only the so-called progress of retaking a single, lonely gate... It was like celebrating winning a single chess pawn when your king was already in checkmate.
What Duke and his two companions saw was a city with a very steampunk style. There were huge metal structures everywhere: tall and heavy cantilevers, steam or unknown gases gushing out everywhere like a broken tea kettle, and swirling and shining lights that looked like a mad gnome's disco party.
Although Duke really wanted to help the dwarves gain a reputation as a high-tech company, a Silicon Valley of the mountains, he couldn't bring himself to do it.
However, Duke, who came from a more modern and technological society, couldn't give a higher evaluation of those huge iron walls and the mechanical devices where each piece of iron could only be fixed with unsightly, oversized oranges. It looked like something a goblin cobbled together in a dark alley.
Of course, for the entire world of Azeroth, everything here was undoubtedly black technology, stuff that would make a wizard scratch his head and a goblin green with envy.
Well, in this world, apart from the truly black technologies left behind by the Titans of creation, the races with the most high-tech elements were undoubtedly: the goblins, who had a desperate, reckless spirit and were extremely prone to explosions no matter what they did; and the dwarves, who were crazy, prone to making mistakes, and whose inventions often had a tendency to spontaneously combust.
Just as the earliest steam engines were probably not as powerful as a horse, the dwarf technology was a bit like that now. Even if a certain creation was epoch-making, a true marvel, it was very likely that it wouldn't be able to defeat a violent demolition crew with a sledgehammer.
The Elf Ranger General, Alleria, who admired nature and hated anything that looked like it was made of more than three parts metal, was now visibly unhappy. She looked like she wanted to give every single one of those clanking contraptions a "Steady Shot" right in its ugly, metallic face.
Duke rubbed his brows, a headache brewing, and directly opened the ice barrier. The fierce cold wind swirled clockwise in the shape of a miniature tornado, surrounding Duke and the other two, creating a personal blizzard.
"This is..." Vanessa looked at the huge ice cover, a shimmering dome with a diameter of twenty meters, which was moving forward with Duke's progress. She was so surprised that she couldn't speak, her jaw practically on the floor.
She had always known how powerful Duke was, but she had never expected that Duke could use this magical force field to drive away all the noxious purple dust floating in the air.
Time was running out, so Duke didn't explain too much, and led the two girls deeper into the labyrinthine depths of Gnomeregan through many twists and turns, like a rat navigating a particularly complex maze.
Alleria was surprised because it looked like no one had been here for a long, long time. Yet Duke was obviously very familiar with this place, navigating it like he'd lived there his whole life.
"Have you been here before?" Alleria asked, her voice tinged with suspicion.
"No, but I have read about this place in detail in the book," Duke replied, his voice smooth as silk, a lie that even he himself didn't entirely believe. The truth was, he was so sick of clearing this dungeon with his brother's alt-account back in the day, he could probably draw a map of it blindfolded.
There were cave dwellers, troggs only half the height of a person, wandering around everywhere, or even shorter, and crazy leper gnomes covered with disgusting, glowing bubbles, but Duke easily dispatched them with a flick of his wrist and an Ice Lance from his Mage's Hand. He treated them like annoying flies.
Duke had no feelings at all about these pathetic monsters that could only cause trouble to an Adept Mage; they were barely worth the mana.
One floor, two floors, three floors – it was like a leisurely picnic. Duke took the two girls through countless rooms and boxes, even falling from various high altitudes without a scratch, and finally arrived at the fourth floor of Gnomeregan.
It was a huge steel passage. The fourth-floor passage in reality was much larger than Duke had imagined. It was fifty meters wide and over thirty meters high, a cavernous metallic tunnel. The steel passage had an iron floor and steel handrails throughout, gleaming dully in the dim light.
Alleria and Vanessa's keen dynamic vision easily captured a strange object shining with a pulsating red light at the far end of the passage. It was hard to describe what it was. It was about the same size as a dwarf, with short, stubby limbs, but with a very small chest and a ridiculously large, bulbous head. Of course, that so-called head was just a red light that scanned the surroundings repeatedly, like a cyclops with a bad case of the jitters.
Duke raised his thumb and pointed at the thing in the distance. "That, ladies, is a mobile alarm system, commonly known as the 'Ghost Spirit.' Of course, this thing poses no threat to us. But... Vanessa, why don't you sneak over there and see if it can find you? Consider it a little pop quiz for your stealth skills." Duke then turned to Alleria: "As for you, please place a few Freezing Traps in the direction of the 'Ghost Spirit.' Just in case our little friend gets a bit too enthusiastic."
Freezing Trap: Any monster that steps on the trap will instantly turn into a large block of ice, unable to move for a short period of time. This is a skill that almost all hunters and rangers have, a classic crowd-control move.
Vanessa and Alleria nodded, a mixture of curiosity and apprehension on their faces, and did as they were told.
More than thirty seconds later, Vanessa, moving like a shadow, arrived in front of the so-called "demon spirit." Stealth was a thief skill that went beyond mere physical techniques. It could use the Focus Energy unique to professional thieves to subtly distort the light around the body, achieving an effect that was practically invisible to the naked eye. Vanessa was very young, but no one could deny her outstanding, almost supernatural, talent as a thief. She was very confident that no one would be able to discover her unless they got very close, especially not without a hunter or ranger who specialized in countering stealth.
She was wrong. Dead wrong.
Just as she was about to waltz past the evil spirit in stealth mode, the strange iron lump suddenly let out a piercing, ear-splitting shriek. "INTRUDER SPOTTED! INTRUDER SPOTTED!"
Not only was the red light on the huge, bulbous head shining brightly, but there was also an extremely sharp, grating sound that could curdle milk. The next moment, several huge metal objects, clanking and whirring, rushed towards their position, like angry, oversized tin cans.
Vanessa wanted to move quickly, to Sprint away in stealth mode and get away from this strange, noisy thing, but who knew that creature's arm would suddenly shoot out a blinding, flashing Flare, illuminating everything within a few meters as bright as day, like a miniature sun exploding. It directly, brutally, broke Vanessa's invisibility.
"Ah!" Little Vanessa finally screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pure terror and indignation.
Those metal creatures also came, but they all obligingly stepped into Alleria's perfectly placed traps and instantly turned into large, immobile chunks of ice, like frozen, metallic statues.
At this opportune moment, Duke calmly shot an Ice Arrow, freezing the "demon spirit" into another big block of ice. All of a sudden, the entire huge steel passage returned to an eerie calm again, the silence broken only by the distant whirring of unseen mechanisms.
The astonishment on Vanessa's face had not yet subsided; it was clear she couldn't quite accept that her legendary stealth had been broken by such a strange, clanking contraption.
Duke smiled, a knowing glint in his eye, and asked Alleria, "How does little Vanessa's stealth level compare to the trolls?"
"At least it's better than eighty percent of the trolls," Alleria admitted, still looking impressed.
"That's enough," Duke said, nodding.
"That's enough?" Alleria questioned, still a bit confused.
"That's enough!" Duke repeated with certainty, a triumphant smirk on his face.
After sniffing the air, Alleria pointed to the far end of the passage and said, "There seems to be a guy who can be called the boss there. I smell trouble."
Duke smiled and waved a dismissive hand. "Whatever. That's not my goal. We're not here for a dungeon crawl, per se."
Duke walked over, unfrozen the robot with a flick of his wrist, and then stood there, instructing the dexterous Vanessa to disassemble the mobile alarm robot. A long string of arcane data, glowing faintly, appeared on Duke's retina.
"You have obtained preliminary structural drawings of the Mobile Alarm System."
Actually, this was not entirely true. As an engineering student who studied construction equipment in his past life, Duke had already figured out the entire structure of this metallic monster. In general... gnomes were fucking geniuses! They actually used the technology of the steam age to play with automatic control technology. The crazy enemy detection system was actually able to sense vibration and heat. This was a move that was beyond the limitations of the times, like a Tesla, Edison, and Einstein rolled into one, but with more gears and steam.
Of course, it wasn't that the robot's technological content was so astronomically high that it would make your head explode. It was that the dwarves had used a lot of simple, violent, and utterly miraculous devices when designing this thing. For example, the principle of this vibration sensor was similar to the ancient "seismograph" before Duke traveled through time, but it was far more sophisticated. It used gears to activate the vibration sensor every time the "demon spirit" took a step. In that short gap, no one would realize that it was actually sensing the vibration within a diameter of tens of meters around it in a static state.
Once there was a vibration, it entered the next stage. It then tested with a heat-sensing stone. When it passed again, it would automatically fire flares in the direction of the heat source to further confirm whether the target was truly invisible or merely concealed. Three types of confirmation ensured that there would be no misjudgment, no false alarms. The last one was the insane, high-frequency horn alarm, a sound that could curdle milk and make your teeth ache. Add to that the unscientific and magically infused power system, and you had a truly terrifying Mobile Alarm System robot.
Duke didn't bother with the final boss. It wasn't an easy task to clean up Gnomeregan. In addition to cleaning up the dwarven traitor, McNeill, he also had to plug all the cracks between the rocks and clean up the not-too-weak radiation. Duke simply didn't have the time or the inclination for such a massive undertaking.
So Duke took the two girls and went straight into the engineering laboratory, like a kid in a candy store.
A day later, Duke returned to his private army, looking like he'd just wrestled a griffin, but he brought back a large number of the latest models of "demon spirits."
"System AI," Duke croaked, his voice hoarse, dark circles under his eyes, and visible fatigue etched on his face. "Are you absolutely sure this thing is okay? No hidden surprises?" But in order to ensure that the thirty thousand troops were no longer constrained by the Horde's stealth, everything was worth it.
"Dear host," the System AI chirped, sounding far too perky, "I am absolutely sure. All gravity sensors have been meticulously set to one hundred and fifty kilograms. Only humanoid creatures that exceed this number will trigger the alarm. And, according to the host's refined habits, I have set the most eye-catching, attention-grabbing warning sound for the demon spirit. You'll know it when you hear it!"
"That's good," Duke mumbled, already half-asleep on his feet.
Duke had practically emptied the entire engineering laboratory in Gnomeregan. He guessed McNeill, the traitor who had betrayed the master craftsman and all the gnomes, would probably go stark raving mad on the spot when he found out his toys were gone.
So, after Duke gave some brief, exhausted instructions, the army set out again, a strange new confidence in their stride. Few people knew that there was actually an engineering laboratory on the fourth floor of Gnomeregan. And absolutely no one knew what Duke had 'invented' in that laboratory and then mysteriously moved to Karazhan.
The soldiers of Stormwind looked curiously at a bunch of strange mechanical gadgets with tree bark on their heads running around the army, like a parade of bizarre, clanking scarecrows. "Tick-tick," they went, making a strange, rhythmic noise. Then there was no effect until that night.
Windsor was utterly puzzled by Duke's bizarre arrangement. He only left the bare minimum number of sentries, but deployed a "quick reaction force" of at least two hundred cavalrymen who were forbidden to sleep all night. Their equipment was also strange – a lasso with steel wire? A long-handled battle axe that was rarely used by cavalry? What in the Light's name is that all about? Windsor wondered, scratching his head.
"Well, I've been a soldier for so many years," one cavalryman grumbled to another. "I've been fighting for almost two years. This is the first time I've heard such a strange order – asking us to 'hunt down' trolls after hearing an alarm in the middle of the night, and it's best if we can get them alive?"
"I heard that if you don't chop off the head of a troll or pierce its heart directly, the wound will basically heal itself after a while?" another whispered, a shiver running down his spine.
"Yeah, there are basically no trolls near Elwynn Forest. You only see a few around Nightwood occasionally. But in Lordaeron, trolls are as common as dirt, right?"
"What kind of alarm is it, anyway?"
None of the cavalrymen knew, and frankly, they were a little scared to find out.
As night fell, they soon found out what the alarm was. Suddenly, in the pitch-black night, they heard a shrill, mechanical cry for help that echoed through the trees.
"Help me! Murder! These fellows are going to cut me into pieces!"
If the person shouting this was a real person, there would be no problem. The problem was that the person shouting was obviously an electronic voice, full of a strange, metallic flavor, like a rusty automaton screaming for its life.
Since this was an order from above, the cavalry moved out quickly, their horses thundering through the night. When they arrived, they found a strange 'demon spirit' with a flashing red alarm light, looking like a deranged Christmas ornament, being chased by two bewildered trolls.
"Come and save me! Someone is showing off here! I can't hold this situation anymore——" the robot shrieked, its mechanical voice cracking with what sounded suspiciously like panic.
Shouting incomprehensible words, the robot tried its best to run with its short, stubby legs. Originally, it couldn't outrun the troll, but when the troll caught sight of the cavalry thundering towards them, it immediately turned tail and ran back into the darkness.
Chasing a troll, a master of stealth, in the pitch-black night was a terrifying prospect, and you could be killed at any moment. But at this moment, the cavalrymen burst out laughing. The troll was sprayed with some special, glowing paint, which still glowed brightly even in the dark night, making him look like a neon sign. The troll seemed to want to wipe it off, but the more he tried, the bigger the glowing stain became, spreading across his skin like a rash.
Would there be any suspense when two ordinary troll scouts, suddenly stripped of their concealment and glowing like fireflies, faced a squadron of aggressive, heavily armed cavalry? Not a chance in hell.
The next morning, the entire force saw the Quick Reaction Force's spoils. "Troll! Freshly made, cute and lively troll!" one soldier shouted, pointing at a captured troll who was still struggling in its bonds, cursing a blue streak in guttural Trollish.
"If you dare to go in and fight with me bare-handed, I will definitely tear you to pieces!" the troll roared, spitting.
"Silver scale breastplate, one piece of hardware..." someone else mumbled, cataloging the meager loot.
There was chaos in the army and the logistics camp. A group of rustic Stormwind soldiers who had never seen a troll before were scrambling to get a glimpse of the captured troll, pushing and shoving like kids at a candy store. There were all kinds of people doing all kinds of things in the camp, and Windsor, seeing that something was not right, gave those rowdy guys a good beating, restoring some semblance of order.
As more and more trolls were captured, many soldiers who had lived in the relatively comfortable Elwynn Forest all their lives saw a troll for the first time. It was a real eye-opener.
A grizzled veteran who had experienced at least five major wars and was now a second lieutenant in the Alliance, took a dagger and, without a moment's hesitation, directly cut off a finger of the tied-up troll. Then he fed a piece of meat to the troll, pointed at the finger that had already begun to regenerate, and explained loudly, his voice booming.
"See? This is your new enemy - the troll!" The lieutenant grabbed the hair of the troll, who was trying to bite him, so that every soldier who was close to the troll could see clearly, their faces a mixture of fascination and horror.
"Our ancestors have been fighting these guys for generations. You were lucky enough to grow up in a relatively comfortable environment. But Stormwind fell, and the orcs who captured our hometown mixed with the trolls who once fought bloody battles with our ancestors. Now they are all tribes. Greenskins are all bad guys. But it doesn't matter, you just need to figure out the weaknesses of your enemies. Know your enemy, know yourself, and you'll win a thousand battles."
The lieutenant then demonstrated on the spot how to cut the troll's throat. "Wow——" Almost everyone thought the troll was dead, a collective gasp rippling through the crowd.
However, even though he was spitting blood and looked extremely miserable, everyone was shocked to find that the troll's throat was healing on its own, the wound closing up like magic, with less and less blood coming out. In the end, he even had the strength to curse in Troll language, a string of vile epithets. Such a magical, gruesome scene scared many people half to death.
"Holy Light, are these evil creatures immortal?" a soldier asked tremblingly, his voice barely a squeak.
"Don't be silly, son, there is no immortal creature in this world," the lieutenant scoffed. "You can't kill him because you haven't found a way." After saying that, the lieutenant stabbed the troll's heart with a sword. In the next ten seconds, the troll struggled violently, thrashing and screaming, and then, with a final, shuddering gasp, he finally stretched out his legs and died.
"Oh oh oh——" The soldiers finally breathed a collective sigh of relief, a wave of nervous laughter spreading through the ranks.
"Trolls are hard to kill, but they are not truly immortal!" the lieutenant explained, wiping his blade. "Stab them in the heart and they will die, as will chopping off their heads. Due to their strong recovery ability, unless you are sure that you can keep the weapon in their heart for more than ten seconds while ensuring your own safety, it is strongly recommended that you go after their heads. You can pierce their heads with a gun or chop them off with a sword. It's clean and efficient, and leaves no trouble behind!"
The above was the lively, if slightly gruesome, scene.
Alleria followed Duke to inspect the camp. Wherever Duke went, there were loud cheers, a wave of adoration following him like a loyal dog.
"Sir Edmund, you agreed to take us back this time!" one soldier shouted, pumping his fist.
"Master Edmund – when are we going to beat the snot out of the orcs?!" another yelled, his voice full of eager anticipation.
Alleria was genuinely surprised. "I... I have never seen such strange morale in an army," she admitted, shaking her head in disbelief.
Duke turned around and asked, a knowing smile on his face, "Why is it so strange?"
"Because of my request, they are now required to pursue a tribe of more than one hundred thousand with only thirty thousand people!" Alleria exclaimed, her voice rising in disbelief. "The outcome is likely to be annihilation, a total wipeout... Why doesn't anyone feel scared or desperate and painful?!"
Alleria bit her lip. After her initial reckless madness for Quel'Thalas wore off, she began to appreciate Duke's difficulties and the sheer courage and determination it took to send thirty thousand elite soldiers to pursue the Horde. Alleria felt a pang of deep regret and sorrow.
Duke 'naturally' put his arm around Alleria's shoulder, a casual gesture that made her heart flutter, and pointed at the soldiers who were busy practicing and attending classes, their faces grimly determined.
"Do you know why no one is afraid? Because the scene before them gives the Stormwind warriors a strange sense of familiarity. They feel like they are back in victory mode."
"Victory mode?" Alleria asked, her face so close to Duke's that she could feel his breath, utterly oblivious to the proximity.
"Yes. I will prepare them mentally first, and then when they face an enemy they know very well, they won't be afraid at all. It's like fighting a ghost in the dark versus fighting a goblin in broad daylight."
That's right! The unknown is always scary, the boogeyman under the bed. When you thoroughly understand everything about the enemy, all their brutality and terror will become just a topic of conversation after dinner, a war story to tell, rather than a heavy psychological burden.
Duke had once used Naga as instructors to train batches of Stormwind warriors. Facts had repeatedly proved Duke's wisdom and foresight, his uncanny ability to see around corners.
"Lord Edmund is our god of prophecy!" one soldier declared, his voice full of reverence.
"He always leads us to victory!" another cheered.
"Well, anyway," a third chimed in, "a commander who can fool the enemy leader is always more reassuring than an idiot leading us to our doom!"
All Alleria heard in her slender ears was the almost deified worship and trust in Duke. For some reason, Alleria felt a strange, sweet warmth in her heart. Was it her momentary curiosity that had led to the birth of a legend? Or was this just fate, a destiny unfolding before her very eyes?
Thinking of all the suffering he had endured for Duke, and thinking of how much Duke had done for him now, how would he face Duke when his hometown was safe? For a moment, Alleria's heart was in chaos, a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.
Just then, Duke blew a breath into Alleria's long ear, as if to play a prank, a mischievous glint in his eye.
"Ah!?" After realizing that it was Duke who was teasing her, Alleria wanted to bite Duke to death, to tear him limb from limb. If there weren't so many people around watching, Alleria swore that she would definitely teach Duke a lesson he wouldn't soon forget.
"What are you thinking about?" Duke asked, his voice low and teasing.
"Wondering, when will this damn war end?" Alleria sighed, her frustration evident.
"This year," Duke said with great certainty, his voice firm and unwavering. "I will tell you my conclusion after the battle of Quel'Thalas is over. Mark my words."
Inference, and more inference. Although it was just a judgment based on intelligence, Alleria felt like she was fighting with the god of fate, grappling with destiny itself. She felt extremely relieved, a heavy weight lifted from her shoulders.
"Okay, I believe you."
When Duke easily broke through the siege and subtle pressure created by the troll scouts, everyone would feel that the trolls were just that simple, nothing more than glorified punching bags.
On that day, Duke's army marched a full eighty kilometers, a truly incredible feat of endurance. Even though this was Lordaeron's own territory and the roads here were relatively easy to travel on, it was still an astonishing achievement, a testament to their newfound morale.
When Orgrim learned that Duke's troops were only fifty kilometers away from his army, he almost gritted his teeth so hard they shattered. The human was playing a dangerous game, and Orgrim didn't like it one bit.
That night Orgrim, fueled by rage, organized a fierce counterattack. He planned to mobilize the entire tribe's army to eliminate Duke's 'tail' first, to crush them like a bug.
However, when the Horde ran for twenty kilometers, they found red lights all over the mountains, blinking like angry fireflies. A bunch of strange metal humanoids, looking like rusty automatons, suddenly started screaming at the top of their mechanical lungs: "Help! Orgrim is attacking at night! They're coming for us! Run for your lives!"