Chapter 322: The Power of Knowledge

There were no swords, nor were there dazzling runes when magic was cast.

What they had were peculiar large canisters.

No, calling them peculiar wasn't quite right, because Mograine recognized those things—they were firefighters' pumps.

Fire, the absolute nightmare of any large city.

A single spark, in the heat of summer or the crisp air of autumn, could reduce an entire district to ashes. In this era of brick and wood houses, firefighting has always been a top priority for all major cities.

The pump is a great invention from the dwarves.

A barrel nearly as tall as a man, placed on a four-wheeled cart, with a hand-operated pump, could navigate any narrow street or alley, spraying water on any burning house.

Now, Mograine didn't know what these firefighting pumps were spraying, but he was absolutely certain it wasn't water.

Each arrow tower had one or two men, sweating profusely, pumping the handle back and forth, applying pressure to the liquid inside, causing it to spray out.

And a torch placed in front of the nozzle was enough to ignite the sprayed oil.

In essence, this was no different from the tools used by fire-breathing performers.

However, the idea to apply this on a large scale on the battlefield, Duke was definitely the first.

Standing atop the highest central tower of Shadowfang Keep, the Alliance's top brass were dumbstruck.

Shadowfang Keep was a full three kilometers away from the coastal defense line, yet they could clearly see the long tongues of fire falling onto the battlefield, igniting many orcs into human torches, and turning half the battlefield into a hell of flames.

The orcs tried to save their comrades by patting them down, but after getting the oil on themselves, they too caught fire. Even if they jumped into the water, the flames still floated on the surface of the sea with the oil, not extinguishing.

"Ancestors above! These are truly the flames of demons!"

"No—this is not the fate a warrior should meet!"

As countless billows of black smoke rose, a wave of fear swept through the Horde's ranks.

"What is this?!" Terenas extended his trembling finger, the constant shaking revealing his inner shock.

"It's merely some whale oil." Marco humbly bowed his head to King Terenas: "However, I feel it necessary to remind Commander Lothar and the generals that in just that short moment, we have burned fuel worth thirty thousand gold coins. In fact, if we continue for another ten minutes, we will be forced to stop the attack."

Lothar was a bit embarrassed, why had he heard that Duke had so much whale oil in Stormwind that he could distribute it to the poor for lighting?

Of course, Lothar had also become 'bad' recently. He was fed up with the stinginess of the kings and nobles when they had nothing to do, and their wailing and gnashing of teeth when they did.

He was more than happy to see Terenas get a little tricked.

Didn't you see that Terenas Menethil was even ready to sell his princess? Under the threat of the potential destruction of his core territory, a few hundred thousand gold coins were nothing, right?

Lothar didn't expose the ruse, and Marco didn't need to use the rest of his prepared speech. Duke had originally told him that he could argue that the purification of the oil was very expensive.

Yes! It was just a matter of adding a few more layers of filters.

Of course, apart from Duke and Marco, no one knew this secret, nor could they understand.

They couldn't imagine that oil could be used in this way, or that firefighting pumps could be used to spray fire.

They wouldn't think that there could be so many alternatives to whale oil as fuel.

This is the so-called limitation of the times. Ignorance, arrogance, and pride blind the eyes of most people, and the minds of mages are filled only with things limited to the mystical realm.

They are bound by the so-called unchanging knowledge of thousands of years.

And Duke...

As a traveler from another world, Duke was just the one to guide them!

The Horde was indeed strong.

Humans once thought that unless they had a complete defense line or more than five times the number of soldiers, it was impossible to defeat the orcs in a land battle.

But now, this enemy, who seemed incredibly powerful in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and countless generals and wise men, was being crushed by an army completely unfamiliar to this world.

The orcs were invincible in melee combat. They only needed to know to move forward, use their strong bodies and solid weapons to destroy everything in front of them, and then the humans would surely be defeated.

At this moment, humans overturned their common sense.

It had nothing to do with courage or personal combat power. This was simple physics and chemistry knowledge, and it made the orcs lose thoroughly.

They lost their courage to charge forward madly, even attacking their own comrades who were pushing them with deadly ferocity. All just to escape this hell of flames.

On the entire front line from south to north, the orcs stopped their attack. They gave up attacking the mountainous area of Gilneas, and also gave up forcibly breaking through the Alliance's coastal defense line. They turned north, killing along the beach to the Northflow Coast, looking for opportunities to break through the coastal defense line and enter the Silverpine Forest.

"We held..." Whether it was Highlord Mograine at the front line, or Lothar and other Alliance leaders at Shadowfang Keep, they all let out a long sigh of relief.

Night fell, and night battles were even more disadvantageous for humans. The Alliance could only give up the plan to counterattack the beach and drive all the orcs into the sea to feed the fish.

A night of truce.

When morning came the next day, the Alliance was dumbfounded.

In the morning fog, along the coastline, a long wall had appeared.

No one expected that the orc leader would have such a strong mind—over two hundred thousand orcs dismantled all the transport ships overnight, and then used the ship's wood to build a coastal defense line composed of three wooden fences.

Not only did they build a defense line, but the Horde also adjusted their main attack direction.

When Lothar was hit by the Horde's elite from all the top ten clans, fully attacking Sepulcher, Lothar's face turned green, and King Terenas even didn't know when he had dropped his scepter, standing there blankly.

April 1st, 2 years after the Dark Portal.

On this day, which Duke found quite ironic, the Horde, with the fire-resistant Blackrock clan orcs as the vanguard, captured the small town of Sepulcher in the Kingdom of Lordaeron in one fell swoop, and built a huge fortress in Sepulcher. Using the fortress as a foothold, they started a counterattack against the Alliance.

After failing to break through the blockade of Lordaeron's royal guards, the leader of this Horde army was worried.

To the north, they couldn't capture Lordaeron's Tirisfal defense line. To the east was Lake Lordamere, where Lordaeron's warships patrolled, bombarding any Horde ships. To the south, Shadowfang Keep was the perfect thorn in their side, stuck there, preventing the Horde from advancing an inch.