Make Azeroth breathtaking

——————————————The dividing line for opening the portal——————————————————

"Clang, clang, clang—"

Amidst the scraping of metal, a massive, heavy tank rolled its tracks and slowly emerged from the portal opened by Tannis's engineering corps, stopping in the open field. A few seconds later, another tank emerged from the portal and stopped next to the first one, followed by a third.

When all three vehicles came to a stop, a new combat unit emerged from the portal. About twenty goblins, each with what looked like an extended version of a musket and a bulging backpack that appeared to be stuffed full of things, two small pistols and several grenades hanging from their waists, and wearing full-body armor with strange square boxes on their wrists and right-hand armor, stood in neat rows. The halos that occasionally flashed from their glasses clearly indicated that their glasses were not just for protection.

Then, five two-seater motorcycles appeared from the portal, each equipped with a machine gun and what appeared to be a small cannon mounted on the back. The goblins riding on them, while not fully armored, were still quite armed, with pistols, grenades, and everything else they needed.

Finally, to everyone's astonishment, two golems, clearly shaped like elven creations, strode heavily into the formation. Although they appeared unarmed, the magical aura surrounding them and the still-dimmed magical runes on their bodies indicated that these golems were not as simple as they seemed. What was even more alarming was that the joints and hands of these two golems were as flexible as those of an ordinary person!

"Improved Arcane Golem?"

Romans immediately recognized the original form of the two golems.

"That's a steam locomotive? But why does it look so... sturdy?"

Dailin also recognized what kind of tank had been driven out.

"That armor is... Tannis the Great Tinker. I remember that this kind of armor is usually equipped with a chainsaw sword or chainsaw axe, isn't it?"

Varian could identify the types of armor the goblins were wearing, but what puzzled him was why these armors didn't seem to be equipped with any melee equipment!

"Hehe! These are the latest achievements of Ratchet City! They all possess combat power far exceeding their prototypes! I'm not bragging, but these elemental tanks, whose system I, Overspark, personally designed, can destroy ten old-style steam tanks and then withdraw from the battlefield almost unscathed!"

The great tinkerer Overspark jumped onto an elemental tank and boasted loudly before being dragged off by Tennys with a drone, his face expressionless.

"Don't brag, there's a gap between theory and practice."

"Tannis, you great tinkerer, don't forget that the theoretical value we calculated was the lowest possible value! If we calculate based on the average..."

"...I don't like the feeling of having high hopes but also high disappointments. You know that I'm a conservative in engineering. I always overestimate the risks and prioritize stability in everything I do."

"conservative....."

Varian, Thrall, and Jaina, who were listening to the two great tinkerers bickering, exchanged knowing glances and unanimously thought of the scene where Tanis controlled a bunch of drones to solve problems with 'explosions'.

'You call yourself a conservative?'

63. The Engineering Team Moving Forward

"Clang, clang, clang—"

In the deep caverns of Molten Core, the mechanical clanging of the elemental tanks as they advanced echoed. Tanis sat on her motorcycle, driving while watching reports from reconnaissance drones about the road conditions ahead.

"By the way, Tannis the Great Tinker, has the biggest problem with the Elemental Tank really been solved?"

Overspark, the master tinker, rode his mechanical chocobo, closely following Tennys's motorcycle. Although he had initially boasted about the elemental tanks' combat capabilities to Varian and the others, he knew his own limitations; the elemental tanks' maximum combat power had, until recently, only been demonstrated in the armory testing lab at the Tinker Tower…

"Yes, it was solved by the source ingot, and it also significantly increased the upper limit of various parameters of the elemental tank."

Tannis swiped her hand across the map projection in front of her, sending the coordinates of the several lava giants roaming ahead to the artilleryman of the elemental tank.

"Are those ore ingots really that magical?"

"Black iron, a metal that can become a perfect conductor of fire under certain conditions, has solved most of our problems. Naturally, source matter, a metal that can act as a superconductor for almost all elements, can solve even more problems."

"......all?"

The information Tannis revealed nearly caused Overspark, who had been so engrossed in his hyperspace teleportation device that he hadn't noticed who Tannis had sent to Ratchet, to fall off his mechanical chocobo.

"Yes, the magic scholars have already tested it. Elementium Ingots can conduct any element almost perfectly without changing themselves. This solves the most troublesome problem for elemental tanks: reloading."

"What about the powers of Holy Light, Shadow, Fel energy, and the Druid's natural forces? Oh, and the purest arcane energy too?"

After recovering from his surprise, Overspark immediately thought of a question.

"Because Ratchet currently has limited source metal, we haven't been able to test it. However, according to Krisik, the elemental smelter who generously donated his technology to us, the shadow seems to move freely within source metal ingots as well."

"If the shadows can move freely, then the holy light can too—it's time to open fire?"

As the three elemental tanks slowly came to a stop on the road and lowered their supports to rotate their turrets, Overspark also stopped his mechanical chocobo.

"Ah."

Tannis's hands flew across the virtual keyboard, maintaining the fire control aiming link with the Elemental Chariot's gunner.

"I remember that when it was designed, the effective range of the Elemental Tank's main gun was only 600 meters, right? Tannis, the great tinkerer, that's more than a thousand meters away from the target."

Oversbach opened the display screen on his mechanical chocobo, glanced at the relative distance between the wandering lava giants that Tannis had arranged for the elemental tanks to target and their current location, and took a slight breath. As one of the designers of the elemental tanks, Oversbach knew very well where the effective artillery limit of this type of vehicle was.

"Don't forget that we calculated the range based on the assumption that only fifty percent or less of the energy would be converted into shells, Overspark, the great tinkerer."

Tannis quickly answered Overspark's question and opened the communication channel with the artillerymen. After the lava giants that were targeted entered the elemental tank's aiming circle, Tannis clenched her right hand tightly and gave the order in a low voice.

"Fire."

As Tannis made this move, the main cannons of the three elemental tanks simultaneously emitted a ring of ice-blue light, followed by a wisp of cold air. Meanwhile, a large plume of white steam, representing the sublimation of frost, suddenly rose from the area in the distance that was being targeted!

"Tch... He's still alive after all that?"

The drone easily revealed that the lava giants, despite being riddled with craters from the compressed ice elemental shells fired from the elemental chariot's main cannon, were still stubbornly lingering within the elemental chariot's firing range. Tannis took a deep breath and issued the order once again.

"Fire."

White steam once again engulfed the target area. Under the renewed blow of the icy power, the lava giants' flowing magma finally solidified completely, depriving them of their last bit of mobility. The powerful giants lay helplessly on the ground, no longer moving—from beginning to end, they had no idea what kind of enemy had attacked them.

"Phew, how was it?"

Seeing the lava giants and the fire elementals beside them reduced to inorganic matter under the bombardment of the elemental tank's main cannon, Tannis signaled the squad to continue their march, while smiling as she looked at Overspark, who was slightly taken aback.

"The two shots were fired less than ten seconds apart. Won't that put too much strain on its artillery system?"

Recalling the original design parameters, Overspark looked up at the still chilling muzzle—well, at least on the surface, there seemed to be no problem.

"Maintaining a rapid firing rate of one shot every ten seconds using shells of the same element for five minutes is definitely not a problem. However, exceeding five minutes may cause excessive load on the barrel... approximately? Because this parameter has not yet undergone destructive testing, a specific value cannot be given."

"...I don't think anything can withstand five minutes of this thing firing rapidly..."

Overspark, who had already reached the bombardment area with Tannis, looked at the icy landscape before him and felt speechless. Heaven help him, even though they had extinguished four fire runes and the water elementals had gradually neutralized the excessive fire element in the area, Molten Core was still an underground cavern dominated by fire element! And those few shots from the elemental tanks had actually blasted out a frozen zone!

“Archimonde can definitely withstand it, and Ragnaros can definitely withstand the main cannon of this thing. Besides, I don’t think this thing will be very effective against Deathwing.”

Tennys shrugged and rattled off a string of names that made Overspark's expression freeze.

"Tannis, the great tinkerer, you're absolutely right..."

"They are all beings who can easily destroy a country or even the world on their own—yes, in the eyes of these beings, we mortals are probably just a slightly larger ant, maybe a little poisonous or maybe not... Using the extraordinary to fight the extraordinary has almost become a habit in Azeroth... just like when we asked the Tidehunters for help to expel Ragnaros."

Tennys murmured, without any particular emotional fluctuation, but Overspark's heart pounded. He suddenly realized that he might be able to figure out what the ultimate dream of Tennys, this often eccentric great tinkerer, was!

"I have a simple dream—in the future, even mortals can stand tall and face the supernatural beings who threaten them without relying on the power of other supernatural beings."

Sixty-four. The Broken Ones of the Cremators

"Is that Guleman?"

Looking at the colossal giant standing at the foot of the cliff in the distance, whose height was estimated to be at least fifteen meters, Overspark couldn't help but gasp at the scorching air inside the Molten Core.

“That should be Guremang. Judging from the temperature spectrum detected by the instruments, the temperature around it has been constant between 450 and 480 degrees Celsius. The temperature on its body surface is about 700 degrees Celsius, and the temperature inside its body is even higher than 1,000 degrees Celsius. You know, the ordinary lava giants we defeated here only had an internal temperature of 500 degrees Celsius. Hey, this guy is more like living magma than a lava giant.”

Tennys put down her binoculars, a hint of seriousness flashing in her pupils hidden behind her glasses. At the same time, Overspark also put down his observation equipment.

"The two lava hounds around it also give me a strange feeling. Tannis the Great Tinker, I don't think it's a good idea to have them around Guremang."

"Um......"

Having gleaned some information about Gureman from fragments of her memory, Tannis rested her chin on her right hand, pondered for a moment, and then made a decision.

"Oversbach, the control of the arcane golems is now in your hands. You must use them to delay the two lava hounds beside Guremang as much as possible."

"And you, Tennys the Great Tinker?"

"me......"

A mischievous smile crept across Tanya's lips.

"I'm going to take this incinerator for a 'drive'."

——————————Below the Cliff——————————————————

The Incinerator, Guremang, stood at the foot of a steep and sheer cliff, his eyes fixed on the blazing runes burning before him, like a sculpture with eternal flames churning within its body. At its feet, two lava hounds lay on the ground, hot enough to scald an ordinary person in half a minute, dozing off contentedly with their eyes half-closed.

'I really want to... burn something...'

Unconsciously, the not-so-bright mind of the Incinerator, Gulemang, began to wander off again. It recalled the scene from countless years ago when it and other fire elementals wantonly burned everything in the material plane. In the endless burning, the image of those tiny, screaming little things struggling helplessly in its flames and finally turning into a pile of charred remains was what Gulemang liked to see the most.

Having become virtually unable to leave the elemental plane, Gulemang constantly longed to set foot on the ground of the material world again, to ignite and burn once more those things that the fire demons called 'living things' or 'mortals'—yes, that would be a really good, really good activity, Gulemang thought.

Unfortunately, although it has returned to the material world, it has been entrusted with the important responsibility of guarding the fire runes. The orders of the Fire Demon King are the most absolute orders for all fire elemental creatures. Therefore, Gulemang can only suppress its nature and please itself by reminiscing again and again.

Suddenly, it saw something strange swaying as it approached. The thing was small, not even as big as Guleman's eyeball, but there were tiny transparent things shimmering on it, which seemed to indicate that it was alive.

'Burn it...'

With the idea that "if you're going to burn it, you might as well burn it," Gulemang, after the flying unit—which might be a bird, an insect, or something else—flew into the range of his incineration aura, directly concentrated the surrounding flames with his mind, causing a fireball to explode on its body. In an instant, the reconnaissance drone, whose structure had already been melted by the high temperature of the incineration aura, turned into a pile of molten iron mixed with metal slag and fell to the ground.

'Not...alive...'

Looking at the crashed drone, Incinerator Gulemang sighed regretfully in his mind. To be honest, he had also experienced burning elemental creatures or some moving metal, but none of them were as exciting as burning living things.

Just as Gulemang continued to stare idly at the fire runes on the ground, a chilling wave that shouldn't have appeared in the Molten Core suddenly assaulted its body and soul. Before Gulemang could even find the source of the chill, the freezing shells fired by the Elemental Tank exploded around it!

"Roar!!!!"

The Glemang, caught off guard by the attack, roared and quickly began searching for the location of its attacker. However, just as it raised its head, another barrage of bombs exploded into a shower of ice flowers on its body! The icy water element seeped into its body, almost freezing the Incinerator's outer shell.

Before the Incinerator could even enhance the power of its core, the third round of frost cannonballs had already reached its head. The pervasive frost mist almost blinded Gulemang, but the direction from which this round of cannonballs came finally allowed the Incinerator to pinpoint their source, locking onto the elemental tanks that were attacking it from a kilometer away!

"Mortals! I will burn you to ashes and feed you to my dogs!"

Without much observation, Gulemang's violent instincts as a fire elemental had already told it who the entity attacking it from afar was. It quickly completed the perfect chain of logic: 'My task is to guard the fire rune—these mortals are attacking me—the mortals are a threat to the fire rune—I will burn all the mortals to ashes to protect the fire rune,' and dragged its two dogs into a charge towards the distance.

——————————————Tannis's Base——————————————————

"It's coming, 900 meters away! Elemental Tank, can you still maintain rapid fire?"

"No problem! Tannis, the great tinkerer! All parameters are perfect!"

The shrill voice of the goblin in charge of fire control came from the elemental tank's communication device. At the same time, the elemental tank opened fire again, but because Guremang's position had changed, the effect was not very good.