Outside the Twin Temples, the sisters Sylvanas and Vereesa raced back and forth across the uneven ground. Like spiders, they ran along inverted, vertical, and sloping walls, their war bows pouring out storms of arrows every second powerful enough to tear an adult to pieces.
On the other side, around the perimeter of this enormous tunnel, the rangers of Quel'Thalas and the dwarven riflemen of Ironforge surrounded the battlefield in a skirmish line, constantly firing their longbows and firearms at the huge crimson bug flailing its limbs.
It gave a grating howl, like a sheet of iron scraping past their ears. Visible sound waves rolled around its body, blowing away most of the bullets and arrows the soldiers fired. Only a small fraction penetrated the sound waves and struck the giant bug, but they left only shallow marks on its hard carapace.
The monster named Ouro swayed its upper body aboveground while its lower half remained hidden beneath the earth. Every sweep along the ground sent nearby soldiers flying with tremendous force. And just as Anachronos had said, after devouring dragon flesh and blood, the damned thing had also mastered certain spells. It could summon sandstorms to seal off the space around itself and immobilize soldiers charging at it. After losing more than thirty soldiers, Liadrin decisively halted these suicidal attacks. There was simply no way to fight this monster at close quarters; they could only rely on the High Elf rangers to suppress it with arrows.
The dwarven Mortar Squad's engineered mortars could also deal substantial damage to the monster, but Ouro's intelligence was beyond anything those ordinary bugs could imagine. After taking three scorching shells head-on and having a gaping, bloody wound blasted into the carapace atop its head, Ouro screeched and burrowed underground. As the earth churned,