klisemfg Chapter 646 Oh right, where was I...?
Chapter 646 Oh right, where was I...?
"By the way, where was I?"
correct...
Where was I?!
The teacher's strange jokes kept echoing in Lorraine's ears. She couldn't understand them, but suddenly the same voice rang in her mind.
A phantom image appeared before my eyes: a young man with a buzz cut and black hair, wearing dull glasses, turned his head from in front of a mechanical, glowing screen, grinned, and reached out, his bone claw piercing through the illusion in the mist.
"Teacher, are you still there? Can you hear my voice? Do you know what I'm thinking?"
Talking to himself in the air, Lorraine, the plague messenger, was like a madman.
His subordinates dared not say anything...
There was no answer; all that remained was the silent road stretching into the distance.
The water mist in the air dispersed into human-shaped forms, creating a halo of various colors that gradually disappeared. It turned out to be the silhouette of a huge searchlight on the top of the underground city, reflecting off the water and shining into Lorraine's eyes.
......
Reality and illusion intertwine; in the dungeon, where the sun never rises for thirty-one days, the daily and nightly exploration is tedious yet unavoidable.
The teacher said that Azeroth is another beautiful world, with its own background music: bagpipes in the wind, insects chirping in the grass, and birds flying in the distance.
I couldn't hear the teacher's voice, nor could I see the magical world he described. All I could see was the jarring noise of the railway tracks and the ruthless, murderous eyes of the two black-robed servants. Their master was determined to brave any danger ahead, even if it was a den of dragons and tigers, let alone a cyberpunk-style mechanical alchemy ruined city.
Are tiny goblins more terrifying than dragons?
joke!
......
Where is Lilith?
"Master, Miss Lilith seems to be moving slowly within a small area, and her life force is relatively stable."
"So she's alright? She's still alive and can move around freely?"
"This...cannot be confirmed..."
Upon hearing this, Lorraine was displeased and frowned, forcing Godots to bow his head in apology.
The two servants stepped back two steps, making way for their master to stand in front.
He stopped before a narrow doorway... Lorraine looked up and saw a steel castle with the venture capital firm's logo embossed on it. The strange design was unremarkable, just a bizarre combination of gears and rivets.
With powerful henchmen by his side, Lorraine had left a backup plan outside the city. He took a deep breath, pressed his artifact to his nose, and activated the Mirror of Truth. He felt confident, but was still somewhat uneasy.
Clutching the invincible Tide Amulet in his hand, Lorraine didn't bother with pretense this time. Perhaps this young man, who wasn't particularly good at acting, was simply going to swagger into the venture capital firm's prized mechanical fortress.
"Enter the city!"
......
The tiny underground city, from a distance, is nothing more than a silver-painted goblin outpost with searchlights and strange antennas on its head, comparable to a flight control tower. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be a giant steel robot, an old-fashioned, rigid, sturdy robot squatting in a deep pit, surrounded by tracks and rails.
In the primeval and modern, amidst steam and black smoke, a sleeping steel giant lies almost half-submerged in the water.
This underground city was built next to a water source, and it seems that the foundations of the buildings extend to the bottom of the water. The water train, which floats in mid-air, does indeed have a futuristic feel.
This left Lorraine momentarily dazed.
This sense of contrast stems from Lorraine's memory that goblins were still creatures who only tinkered with scrap metal in the junkyard, and could concoct some dubious things after a little thought.
At least in the legends of the human kingdoms, goblins are no different from kobolds and ratmen, nor are they any more noble than gnolls or orcs; in fact, they seem to be more evil and cunning.
To be fair, this really is a magical, technologically advanced city.
Outside the city, the railway tracks and trains are extensive and bustling, but strangely, unlike other places, there seem to be no staff or guards directing traffic outside the city.
Everything runs automatically; there's not even a driver on the train...
They simply operate according to the program; this self-driving, goods-transporting system is very much in line with the style of downtown Black Market...
Discreet shipping, regardless of the customer, delivering minerals and weapons to both sides of the war, whether it's the Horde or the Alliance, as long as you pay, the venture capital firm will provide the full service.
Making money by taking from both sides—that's the way to make money. Spear and shield, crime and punishment—they don't matter...
The automated rails act like trenches and natural barriers, protecting the safety of the entire underground city.
Upon arriving at the city gate, Lorraine was surprised to find no guards. He wondered if the underground city was truly an alien technological creation or just a temporary outpost.
......
More than a decade ago, when the Alliance and the Horde were fighting side by side or battling each other, this place was indeed just a camp.
The makeshift camp had a few wells, a few water pumps, some pipes, and some rudimentary coal trains for transportation.
Since Outland connected with the mysterious Astral Consortium, the goblin conglomerates' technology has become increasingly advanced. It is said that Area 52 is already developing civilian versions of rockets and magic-powered mechs.
On the surface of Azeroth, in the decade since the Hyjal War, the Alliance and the Horde have been hacking at each other with axes and greatswords, with occasional appearances of dwarven musketeers and warships with homemade cannons, and the independent research and development capabilities of mechanical geniuses are nowhere to be seen.
It's even harder to imagine that the goblins built a real mechanical city underground, no less technologically advanced than the so-called mechanical dwarves and gnomes. On the contrary, they often exchanged and learned from each other's technologies.
Previously, Lorraine thought Katz was bragging, saying that his venture capital firm was no weaker than the Xiushui Conglomerate, and was even the true master of the underground black market kingdom.
Lorraine had initially dismissed it, but now, standing before the steel gates, unsure how to enter the city, he suddenly acknowledged Kaz's arrogance. He even recalled his teacher mentioning that the Azeroth Post Office was backed by the mysterious Goblin Consortium and the Astral Consortium.
One thing Lorraine clearly remembered was that the busiest neutral auction houses in Azeroth seemed to be located in goblin territory. Gadgetzan was one, Booty Bay was another, and Lorraine didn't know where the so-called black market was, except for the area near Gadgetzan.
......
Lorraine stood there dumbfounded at the entrance, examining the gateway to the underground city.
The rows of small portals on the edge of the steel city seemed only large enough for goblins to pass through, except for the larger one where Lorraine was now located, which was also the main entrance that Kaz had pointed out.
Lorraine discovered that apart from the sealed, airtight door, there seemed to be no sign of life here.
Is the entire underground city an uninhabited city?
impossible?
Could there be another world just inside that wall?
It seems this place is nothing like the bustling, vibrant goblin-infested neutral cities on the surface, with their lively ports and hospitable goblins. All that's in front of me is a cold iron gate; it seems I don't have the key to enter the legendary Black City center, the underground city.
As I hesitated, it seemed that some light was leaking through the seamless steel door.
......