By the time the High Elf reinforcements set out, the Horde army had already passed through Blackrock Spire and was struggling through the harsh terrain of Searing Gorge and the Badlands.
It was a hot, barren land, scorched black and cracked as far as the eye could see. Even the wind felt as though it were roasting them.
These regions had been abandoned for over three hundred years, ever since the Burning Steppes appeared. No one had lived there for ages.
Finding a route through such hostile terrain meant slowly feeling their way along in the general direction they wanted to go.
While the Orcs were still searching for a way north, the human allied army had already begun training.
Most of the allied troops were farmers who had only just put down their hoes.
Muskets, weapons that had been heavily promoted in recent years, were well suited to arming them.
Most of the Seven Human Kingdoms operated under a feudal system of serfdom.
Training farmers into musketeers with powerful offensive capabilities would undoubtedly undermine the standing of the knightly lords.
But when forced to choose between muskets and the interests of those knightly lords, the kings still chose the former.
With the Orcs threatening to destroy their kingdoms, even a fool knew which choice to make.
The facts had proven that the knightly lords' charges were not particularly reliable.
There were too few of them, and the Orcs would soon wear them down.
Only musketeers in sufficient numbers were truly suited to fighting the Orcs.
As for the backward system of landlords and serfs, the Six Northern Kingdoms were already exploring reforms.
The Dalaran Magic Kingdom and the Kingdom of Kul Tiras had even completed those reforms and embarked on a better path of development.
The facts had proven that the backward landlord-and-serf mode of production yielded far less profit than developing industry and commerce.
Taking advantage of the Orc invasion to change their systems was a tacit decision shared by all the kings.
Promoting muskets had therefore become politically correct.
Amid this transformation, the Dawnedge Armory secured the largest number of orders from the allied army.
Having learned that the Orcs were heading north, the Gnomes and Dwarves were now devoting all their efforts to preparing war supplies.
It was a wonder they were not buying arms from outside themselves!
On the docks of Sunsail Anchorage, Herad waved goodbye to the Iron Behemoth as it slowly left port.
The warship carrying the High Elf reinforcements to Southshore was a transport vessel that approached modern standards.
With a displacement of just over seven thousand tons, it did not quite qualify as a truly enormous ship.
But among sailing warships that generally displaced only a little over three thousand tons, it was an absolute giant!
Transporting the High Elf Rangers to Southshore was not a particularly urgent task.
The Orcs were still crawling along in the south, so why rush to Southshore?
The Goblin captain therefore made frequent stops along the way, conducting maritime trade with the cities on their route.
The High Elf Rangers had no objections either.
Their mission to support the Human Kingdom had turned into a sightseeing trip.
The Rangers had a thorough understanding of warfare with firearms.
Once they reached the front, the warship would be their real fighting strength.
The main gun at its bow alone could match the firepower of more than a dozen cannons.
They only needed to provide the warship with the enemy's coordinates, and the enemy would soon have no meaningful force left.
Thoroughly indoctrinated in firearm tactics, the High Elf Rangers had tossed guerrilla warfare out the window!
Still, firearms were the way of the future.
Reality was not a game. There were not enough divine bows to equip every ranged combatant.
The Dwarves had already largely completed the process of arming their entire race with firearms.
Even Warriors carried a musket on their backs, ready to pull it out and go "bang, bang, bang" at any moment.
For the mountaineers patrolling the wilderness, a long-barreled musket and a grizzly bear were standard equipment.
Even the Human Kingdom had begun adopting firearms.
Nearly half the allied soldiers undergoing training were musketeers.
Whether the northbound Orcs could hold out under a hail of bullets and shells until the final battle before being defeated was genuinely open to question.
Herad soon received an answer.
After successfully finding the territory of the Dwarves and Gnomes, the Orc army displayed outstanding tactics for countering firearms.
They evaded artillery fire, used the terrain to close in on their enemies, then launched frenzied charges.
Although they did not completely crush the Dwarves and Gnomes, they forced them into steady retreat across the broader battlefield.
Back on their homeworld, Planet Draenor, the Orcs had defeated the Draenei, who possessed Spaceships and were capable of interstellar colonization!
Though the Draenei were wretched interstellar refugees whose strength fell short of a true interstellar civilization, they were still formidable.
Their technological level was very high, and they even possessed Energy Weapons.
Yet after only a few years of war, the Orcs had driven them to the brink of extinction.
With the berserk strength granted by demon blood, the Orcs had used sheer savagery to defeat civilization!
Now a similar scene was playing out on another planet.
Watching the forts the Dwarves and Gnomes had built along the mountain roads fall one after another to the savage, raging Orcs, Herad could only lament that barbarism had once again defeated civilization.
Still, there really were too few Dwarves and Gnomes.
They had also underestimated the Orcs and failed to mobilize fully for war.
Trying to fight the Orcs with an army of a few thousand was taking them far too lightly.
Fortunately, both races liked building defenses.
The Dwarves had built a Fortress City inside a mountain.
Once they sealed the city's entrance, the Orc army's advance stopped there.
The Gnomes, meanwhile, had excavated a vast Underground City.
It, too, was a defensive stronghold that was easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Faced with these two turtle-like races, the Orcs launched fierce assaults again and again, yet failed to achieve any breakthrough.
Watching his forces repelled time after time, Orgrim had no choice but to change his strategy once more.
He left nearly half his army stationed nearby to keep the two races from coming out and causing trouble.
If these tough nuts could not be cracked, they could be left for now. Once the humans had been dealt with, there would be time to crack them slowly.
Draenor had possessed plenty of tough nuts.
One by one, they had all been cracked that way.
Preparing to continue north, the Orc army soon left snow-swept Dun Morogh behind.
They entered the coastal Wetlands, searching for a route farther north.
Once there, Orgrim made plans on two fronts.
One army would continue exploring, seeking a land route north.
The other would build ships on the coast and strike directly by sea at Southshore, deep within the Human Kingdom.
Orgrim had a keen eye and immediately identified Southshore as the ideal landing site.
The Hillsbrad Foothills, where Southshore lay, were the backyard of several neighboring kingdoms.
If the Orcs landed at Southshore, they could threaten every kingdom around it.
In truth, anyone with even a little strategic insight could see Southshore's importance.
That was why the Human Kingdom's allied army was training there.
The refugees from Stormwind City had also taken shelter there.
A major battle centered on Southshore was surely inevitable!
But before the Orcs could reach Southshore, they first had to build their ships.
The Orcs were a typical nomadic people. They did not know how to build large ships capable of crossing the sea.
But as long as the money was right, someone would naturally build ships for them.
Several short, green-skinned creatures calling themselves Goblins approached Orgrim of their own accord.
When he learned that they could help build ships, Orgrim immediately took an interest.
Those Goblins could supply a kind of black glue.
The black glue was extremely strong and would not dissolve when submerged in water.
After seeing how well the black glue bonded things together, Orgrim approved the deal on the spot.
The Orcs would cut down trees and transport the timber.
The Goblins would glue the timber together.
Once the glue had dried completely, the ships could be pushed into the sea and put to use.
The invention of black glue was all that separated painstaking shipbuilding from simply slapping a vessel together.
With black glue, ships would become dirt cheap.
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