When Duke announced at the Alliance throne meeting that he would not personally participate in the battle before the Stairs of Madness in Ulduar, and asked Thorim to come forward to explain the reason, the Alliance leaders showed complicated expressions.
In the past, even when Duke was promoted to demigod, people still didn't feel it was so real.
After all, it seems that Duke has not changed much.
He is still in charge of the Alliance, and with the momentum of a single man against a thousand men, he efficiently maintains the operation of internal affairs and logistics.
It is a universally acknowledged rule that a thousand chamberlains are no match for one duke.
While being promoted to demigod, Duke did not forget the development of the Alliance. He was still the guiding light, directing the development direction of science and civilization.
Originally, the atmosphere was quite good, but with the birth of the second demigod within the Alliance, things seemed to have changed a bit. Sylvanas' deification was more like an invisible stimulus, stimulating everyone to pursue a higher realm and a more powerful force.
Otherwise you will be pulled down.
Duke did say so: "Everyone, work hard. I hope that in ten years, most of you here will become demigods. The Burning Legion will come back in ten years at most. By then, we may have to face the three giants of the Legion in their prime, as well as the Void Lords of various levels."
That's right, because of the existence of the planetary protection array, even if the Burning Legion's demons could forcefully descend, their strength would be greatly reduced.
Just because you can kill a nerfed Void Lord doesn't mean you can kill the original one.
Because when the demon's health, strength, magic power and other indicators have increased several times compared to before, its strength is no longer increased by several times, but dozens of times in a minute.
Without enough powerful warriors, they can't even withstand the prelude to the Legion's return.
When all the fields are destroyed, the mountains and rivers are polluted, and there is a lack of food and drinking water, how long can the lonely main cities survive?
Neltharion is dead, and so is Malygos.
Onyxia and Kalecgos, at best, can only match the power of an original guardian dragon, and are even far inferior to...
Under the most ideal conditions, the planetary protection array would only have 80% of its power left.
The Burning Legion is determined to destroy Azeroth, and there is a civil war between bronze dragons that no one knows how to prevent. Duke can foresee that with the fall of Nozdormu in the future, the planet's protection array will be further weakened.
When the barrier is no longer a barrier, the only ones left to rely on are these powerful mortals in front of you.
Two fists cannot beat four hands. No matter how strong Duke is individually, he cannot withstand all the demons.
It is no exaggeration to say that whether this group of people can be promoted to demigods is related to the survival of the entire Azeroth.
This is why Duke must let them go and give them experience.
Everyone had a fire in their hearts and was secretly holding back their energy.
Whether for the sake of one's own people, one's own country, one's alliance, or even for the sake of this world, one must upgrade to a demigod.
All those below the demigod level are ants...
Then, on the day of the expedition, after entering Ulduar, the scene suddenly changed.
"Wait! Duke, didn't you say you couldn't come?" Everyone was shocked to see Duke sitting on a tank with a huge gun barrel.
"Just because Edmund Duke said he wouldn't come, doesn't mean Mark Dooku won't come!" Duke was farting seriously.
"quibble!"
"Shameless!"
"Dirty!"
"Yes! I second the motion!" A group of alliance leaders started to make a fuss.
Damn it! You said you would let us go and fly solo? We have done so much mental preparation and struggle in vain. You actually come here again.
Faced with a group of people bombarding him, Duke had no choice but to admit defeat, "Well, actually, I'll only play the first level. I'll kill the Flame Beast and then I'll run away."
"Why?" asked Sally Whitemane.
At some point, Duke had already linked arms with Magni, Brann, and several other dwarves like Gelbin, as if they were tap dancing, revealing smiles that outsiders could not understand: "Giant ships and Cannons, this is the romance of men——"
Duke pointed to the distance and said, "Look—a civilization that is more advanced than ours, but comes from an ancient civilization. Brothers, do you see it?"
Magni raised his hand to cover his forehead, stood on tiptoe, and looked into the distance: "Yes, it is the crystallization of technology that is beyond its time."
Brann jumped onto his eldest brother's shoulders and waved his fist excitedly: "See, that's an even more awesome Cannon!"
Gelbin jumped onto Brann's shoulders again, and the three dwarf leaders played a human ladder. He waved the wrench and said, "See, that's the call of the future."
A group of alliance masters nearby: "..."
The look clearly said: You are filthy! I can't stand you technology freaks!
Generally speaking, there are three types of vehicles modified with titan Runes this time.
The first type is the Mammoth Tank which focuses on protection. Not only does it have triple armor, but it also uses the wreckage of the Burning Legion's interstellar battleship floating in the Azeroth Void Battlefield. The relatively intact armor was broken off and the dragons were asked to help. It took a lot of effort to cut it.
It is equipped with four large-caliber 105mm howitzers and equipped with various primary titan rune shells. A full round of salvos can definitely make the enemy feel like death.
The second type is the Katyusha self-propelled rocket launcher that focuses on long-range firepower. In addition to the crazy pseudo-missile system, there is also a human Cannon that is specifically designed to shoot people out, specifically to deal with the boss Flame Beast.
The third type is the Harley motorcycle that Duke and several dwarf leaders are riding now.
Duke, who had transformed into Mark Dooku, extended his right middle finger, pressed the large sunglasses in front of him, and said in a deep voice: "Does everyone know the rules?"
"Hmph! When I won the Loch Modan Snow Rally for the 36th consecutive time, you were still nowhere to be found?" Magni also stretched out his short middle finger and pressed it against his goggles.
"Hehe! Let me, the God of Driving Dun Morogh, show you what real driving skills are." Brann twisted the throttle of the motorcycle, and with the brake engaged, the rear wheel emitted a puff of white smoke due to the friction with the ground.
"Hehe! It's just right for you to use my Three Thousand Killings Pot Wheel Boost System, so that you can see my taillights by then." The dwarf master craftsman Gelbin stretched out his short legs and stepped on the special accelerator.
The four guys were completely into the game and full of energy.
Duke said loudly: "In the five rounds, the one who brings back the most and densest number of defenders is the winner."
Magni: "The winner will be awarded the title of Akina Mountain Car God."
Brann: "The loser leaves behind a car logo. If you don't pull enough monsters, fall off the car, or have your car destroyed, you lose."
Gelbin: "By the way...what is Akina Mountain?"
Motorcycles, although the Alliance has begun research on lightweight diesel engines, progress in engineering is not so easy to achieve overnight.
Duke had a system AI to help him record those distant memories, but he was not a mechanical engineer before he traveled through time, so he only knew the general idea of many things but not the details.
Many times, a change to a nut or a drive shaft means a complete redesign.
Like a simpler bicycle.
On Earth, the first bicycle was made of wood by Frenchman Jacques Chirac in 1790. It was not until Duke traveled through time and space, after more than 200 years of history, that it was considered to have a certain pattern. In the middle, there were bicycles with large and small wheels, unicycles that pulled people on the road of acrobatics and never looked back, and everything else.
Because the imaginations of the dwarves and gnome craftsmen were so big and amazing, Duke had to follow history and change the motorcycle to a design that was closer to the original historical design.
It just looks more like the Harley Davidson that Arnold Schwarzenegger drove in the movie Terminator 2 Fat Boy.
It only looks like a diesel car on the surface, but it's full of titan technology inside.
Because it is not burning diesel, there is only a miniature titan Rune power array in the entire cylinder. 36 smallest titan Runes form a nearly perpetual motion machine structure, which automatically absorbs any basic elements of earth, water, fire, and wind around it as energy to replenish the power inside.
Unfortunately, the energy absorbed is only enough to keep the motorcycle crawling at a slow speed of 20 kilometers per hour. If you really want to perform fast and furious, you must consume the stored energy. Because the element pool of this new type of motorcycle is very small and is also limited by the level of materials science, the time it can reach a speed of 80 kilometers per hour is very short.
In a nutshell: charge for eight hours and show off for five minutes.
If we consider the energy supply of the vehicle-mounted rifle mounted on the back seat of the motorcycle, the time will be even shorter. It can only maintain about three minutes of firing and speeding at full speed, and then it can only return to a speed of 20 kilometers per hour.
Duke himself had an idea. He wanted to install a fully automatic ammunition belt and then synchronize it with magic so that the mounted rifle would turn to the direction where the motorcycle helmet turned.
Unfortunately, at a time when automatic rifles have not yet been developed... Duke can only use the luxury of making magic Cannons, using the energy of titan runes as ammunition to create a titan ray rifle for the motorcycle that does not require ammunition.
The price is naturally a reduction in racing time.
Of course, the cunning Duke was not willing to see the performance of vehicles, including motorcycles, reduced so drastically, so he installed external energy interfaces on the Fat Boy Motorcycle, Katyusha Rocket Launcher Vehicle and Mammoth Tank.
In theory, as long as you plug the high-purity titan energy crystal into the interface, you can immediately charge the vehicle and provide extreme power for a longer period of time.
Okay, after all this talk, why doesn't the Hero Group just push forward?
Dear sir Gavinrad, I have personally verified this through lessons of blood and tears.
Although each guardian in the walled area of Ulduar may not have devastating attack power, their skin and flesh are thick enough to give any hero at this stage a headache.
What's more despairing is not this.
During the time when the vehicle was being prepared, Gavinrad, who didn't believe in evil, relied on his thick skin and strong muscles and started to fight with his wind sword.
Then something funny happened: when he had gone through so much trouble and spent three hours carrying a dozen Steel Cast Defenders in the shape of iron dwarfs and finally dismantled them into scrap metal, a metal door in the distance opened and a dozen identical iron dwarfs ran out and filled the original position.
Gavinrad immediately bent forward in frustration, and fell into a mysterious state in an ORZ posture, almost like a stupefied dog.
That's right, the entire Ulduar Walled Area is a defense zone with a fully automated mechanized guard production factory. If there is any war damage, the main control computer of the defense zone will make up for it within a certain period of time.
There is only one way to get through the walled area: you have to kill faster than the defense system can produce, and quickly advance to the factory's main control tower. Only by destroying those towers can you stop the production of defenders in some areas.
Anyone who attempts to fight a war of attrition using human wave tactics will only be overwhelmed by real human wave tactics.
Moreover, assault battles cannot be fought casually. To put it bluntly, the only thing that can truly restrain those guardians is the energy weapons forged with titan runes.
"Let's go, let's go!" Four veteran drivers drove their motorcycles and took the lead, leaving the slow-moving Mammoth tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers behind them for nine blocks.
Because Ulduar itself also has a large number of automated attack vehicles, the entire front of the city wall area is paved with extremely flat, super-hard bricks and stones, making it a holy place for racing.
In the blink of an eye, I couldn't even see the taillights of the car.
"Ah--" Gelbin took advantage of his light weight and stepped on the accelerator to the bottom. The micro titan engine made a deafening roar, providing powerful power for this huge motorcycle weighing nearly half a ton.
The entire heavy motorcycle seemed to be flying.
Twist left and swing right.
While speeding, Gelbin's motorcycle made three S-shaped turns of different sizes, easily passing through the ten iron dwarfs without any injury.
"Hahaha! Want to hit the God of Cars? You are not qualified!" Gelbin laughed and flew up from a small steel slope on his motorcycle. To be honest, he really enjoyed the feeling of flying in the clouds.
However, he was just a little bit away from being overjoyed.
Right in front of him on the right, next to a seemingly abandoned iron tower, a huge two-and-a-half-story iron golem suddenly appeared. This kind of statue, called the Rune Etched Statue, is a typical siege weapon.
It raised its huge palm and slapped it in the air.
"Wow--" For a moment, Gelbin almost peed his pants.
If he had not activated a privately installed jet device at the critical moment, his height would have dropped from one meter to less than ten centimeters in one breath.
Well, it almost became a meat paste.
Several pretentious criminals on motorcycles were welcomed to varying degrees by the guards.
Magni was being chased by a Mechanical Dwarf Battle Tank. The mechanical dwarf gripped the control stick tightly and fired a burst of machine gun fire at Magni.
If Magni hadn't cheated and turned the Fire Demon's hammer into a huge flame shield that blocked the area near the taillight, his motorcycle would have been blown up long ago.
Brann is even more awesome. He is able to ride a motorcycle while using a Famous Santos Shotgun dropped from the Sunwell to fight against the Mechanical Attack Machine 54-A which is similar to a helicopter in the sky.
Among those pretentious guys, Duke is of course the coolest one.
Relying on his familiarity with the terrain, Duke drove his motorcycle shrewdly and directly pulled over...more than a thousand guards.