Magic? My Iron Torrent will sweep it all away!

Chapter 161 Great Xia Technology May Save the Dwarves

Thorin opened his mouth, but couldn't utter a single word.

Drummond was still excitedly saying:

"Furthermore, His Majesty has ordered Archbishop Kyle to negotiate with the Great Xia people in hopes of purchasing more Great Xia weapons."

A burst of fire erupted from Thorin's eyes.

He snatched the battle report from the table and tucked it into his arms, then turned and left.

"Master Steelbeard? Where are you going?" Drummond called from behind.

"Back to my blacksmith shop!" Thorin roared without turning around. "I'll treat you to drinks another day!"

Thorin Steelbeard rushed back to the blacksmith's shop in a flurry of activity.

"Clang!"

He kicked open the heavy oak door of the shop, slamming it against the wall and making the tools on the wall clang.

The dwarf apprentices and their master, who were sweating profusely in front of the furnace, were all startled and stopped what they were doing, looking towards the door.

"Master, what is this...?" A young apprentice was interrupted by Thorin before he could finish speaking.

"Come here, everyone!"

Thorin's voice was rough and impatient. He strode to the largest anvil in the center of the blacksmith's shop and slammed the crumpled parchment onto it with a "thud".

Several dwarves gathered around, cursing and swearing.

"What is it now, Thorin? Are the humans pressing for another order? Tell them to wait!"

"Push for orders? I'd rather it be orders!" Thorin roared, pointing to the numbers on the battle report. "Look at it yourself!"

Although dwarves are not good at human writing systems, they can still recognize simple numbers and common military terms.

"The casualty ratio... is one to ten?"

"The Tech Legion suffered 37 casualties... and annihilated... over 10,000 enemies?"

"hiss--"

A collective gasp filled the blacksmith's shop.

One of the dwarves lost his grip on the iron tongs, and they fell to the ground with a clatter.

"One shot...severely injuring a fifth-tier demon?" Another dwarf rubbed his eyes, leaned closer to look, and almost burned his beard on the parchment.

"And this!" Thorin's finger slammed heavily into another section of the report.

"A rifle? It's enough for an ordinary person with barely any training to take down a second-tier inferior demon!"

The entire blacksmith shop fell silent instantly, with only the bellows and the furnace still whirring.

"Impossible!" a hot-tempered dwarf blacksmith immediately retorted.

"Absolutely impossible! What kind of damn nonsense is this! What kind of broken iron rod could have such power? Unless it's a legendary weapon!"

"I hope it's just a lie!" Thorin's voice was filled with barely suppressed frustration.

"But haven't you noticed the impact on our business?"

"We haven't had a single decent sale in a while!"

"Those long-legged knights would rather tinker with those black iron bars than come here to repair their livelihood!"

This statement left all the dwarves speechless.

Forging is the lifeblood of dwarves, their glory.

And now, their glory is being ignored.

"I just went out and found out everything," Thorin continued, recounting all the information.

"..."

The blacksmith shop fell silent.

Old Bahrain, who had been silent all along, finally spoke, his voice steady and powerful:

"It's really hard to believe, but the fact is they won the war."

A trace of sadness flashed in his cloudy eyes.

"Three days ago, a message came from the mountain city via a messenger crow. The defenses of the No. 3 mine in the west have been breached by the demons."

Bahrain's voice lowered:

"We dispatched thousands of our most elite rune guards to plug that breach. Our opponents are several fourth-tier burrowing dragons and over ten thousand demons."

The atmosphere in the blacksmith shop instantly became heavy, and all the dwarves lowered their heads.

Bahrain continued:

"The result was a narrow victory with heavy casualties! Now look at the human battle reports!"

Everyone's gaze fell on the parchment, settling on the words "Thirty-seven dead" and "Severely wounded fifth-tier demons".

Anger, humiliation, and resentment all eventually turned into heartache.

The dwarves' most elite warriors, in their familiar underground tunnels, could not defeat an enemy even with six times the casualties.

Humanity, on the open plains, with a weapon they couldn't understand, achieved a massacre-like victory at a negligible cost.

What a load of bullshit glory!

What kind of bullshit forging technique is that!

In the face of stark reality, it is utterly worthless!

"Steelbeard is right." Old Balin looked at Thorin's flushed face and said, enunciating each word clearly.

"We need to figure all of this out!"

"That's right." Thorin's eyes gleamed like a furnace fire as he crumpled the battle report in his hand into a ball.

"Get their weapons over here, take them apart and have a look!"

"Then, figure it out!"

"That's right! Tear it down!"

"Melt it down and see what its internal structure is like!"

Thorin's proposal instantly ignited the craftsmanship spirit of all the dwarves, and further fueled their desire to defeat the demons.

"This intelligence must be sent back to the mountain city immediately for His Majesty the King to decide," Balin added.

"That's what I think too," Thorin nodded.

"I immediately wrote a letter requesting the king to send an envoy to formally contact that otherworldly being called 'Great Xia'!"

"Yes! Contact them! Buy! We need to buy those weapons too!"

"Buy them! Let our soldiers riddle those demon bastards with bullets even in the tunnels!"

The dwarves were filled with righteous indignation.

Thorin grabbed a piece of sturdy parchment and, using specially made fire-resistant ink, wrote down everything that had happened in the City of Light in the simplest dwarven script.

After he finished writing, he rolled up the parchment, stuffed it into a metal letter tube, and handed it to the youngest apprentice in the shop.

"Go! Give it to the raven!"

"Tell it that if it flies too slowly, I'll pluck all its feathers and make soup from it!"

"Yes, Master!"

The apprentice accepted the order and dashed off like the wind.

The blacksmith shop fell silent again, with only the roaring fire in the furnace remaining.

Thorin stared intently at the flickering flames, as if he could see his brethren deep beneath Ironforge, fighting a bloody battle against the demons.

He suddenly grabbed his own legendary warhammer, weighing over a hundred pounds, from the iron rack next to him.

"Master, what's going on?" Balin looked at him in confusion.

Thorin slung his warhammer over his shoulder and was about to walk towards the door when he spoke in a deep, gruff voice...

"I can't wait any longer, I'm going to 'borrow' a rifle to study it."

........

The City of Verdant Leaves.

The newly conquered city of Emerald Leaf was in dire need of reconstruction. Since it was elven territory, the Great Xia did not rebuild it, but instead stationed troops there, waiting for the elves to take over.

Because the intelligence network had not yet been established, Lin Mo and the others were unaware of the immense upheaval that the arrival of the Great Xia had caused on the Terra continent.

On the afternoon of the same day that the city of Verdant Leaf was captured, the Elven messengers brought several pieces of good news with unprecedented speed.

1. The elven army that took over is already on its way.

2. On another front, the effects of the Great Xia equipment are impressive, and the Queen has ordered that more Great Xia equipment be purchased.

Of course, there is a third point, which is the World Tree Seed as a reward for taking over the Green Leaf City!