Traveling through time, I'm making pancakes in Warhammer

Chapter 254 Left Hand

Howard's words immediately alerted the Eldar. She asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Because... because..." Howard gasped, "I think! I think I found what you're looking for!"

So Mei became even more alert and confused. She was the best scout in the Eldar team. From the area where humans and orcs were fighting until now, she had been maintaining the highest vigilance. And out of her duty as a pathfinder, she would go to check anything suspicious as soon as possible.

Up to now, apart from the human corpses lying around and one or two fart spirits trying to launch a sneak attack, Mei has not found anything more valuable.

"Because I saw it! I saw it!" Howard, who had just finished the profiling and was still a little dazed, noticed May's doubts and started waving his hands and gesturing while shouting, "No! No! I didn't see it, but I saw it all!"

The elves and the nuns exchanged glances. Past experiences told them that some of this human's inexplicable actions might have significant meanings behind them, but now he looked like he was going crazy.

"Listen to me! Listen to me!" Howard knew they didn't understand, so he tried to explain, but he still stuttered: "That mechanical priest! The left hand! The undrawn gun in the left hand! The thing I didn't see!"

The nun and May were still confused.

"I..." Howard opened his mouth to continue explaining, but then he hit himself on the head.

"Please wait!" Howard raised his hand to signal for them to stop. He swallowed hard to moisten his dry, aching throat and said to the two men, "Please give me thirty seconds to think and organize my words."

The nun and May naturally had no reason to object, and during these thirty seconds Howard jumped off the nun. Fortunately, there was only a thin layer of liquid left on the melted orc corpse under his feet.

Howard paced through the narrow space, but after only two steps, he bumped into the cave wall with a "bang". Howard cried out in pain and squatted down, holding the place he had hit. He was so excited that he forgot he was still in complete darkness, and even forgot that this was just a narrow passage.

"Ouch..." After squatting for a while, Howard rubbed the area where he had been hit and stood up with a grimace. The collision seemed to have restored his logical thinking. He turned in the direction where he thought the nun was and said with a sharp gaze, "Sister, please answer your question first. Why didn't those soldiers detonate the ammunition in the end?"

Unfortunately, the reality was that Howard was facing away from the nun and May. The collision might have restored his language logic, but it seemed to have also knocked away his sense of direction.

The nun walked forward helplessly, grabbed Howard's shoulders and turned him around. Howard was startled when the nun touched him. After all, in Howard's cognition at that time, he was facing the nun and the elves, and the touch from behind would indeed make him uneasy.

"I'm listening," the nun said, turning Howard around and igniting a feeble light.

"According to your assumption, detonating the remaining ammunition would have destroyed the orcs along with them, but they didn't do that," Howard said. "Then the question is, did they not want to detonate the ammunition, or did they not have the ability to detonate the ammunition?"

"Is there any difference between the two?" the nun was puzzled.

"Not wanting to detonate means they have the ability to detonate the ammunition but chose not to for some reason. Being unable to detonate the ammunition means they are unable to do so. For example, when someone wants to detonate the ammunition, the ammunition boxes have already been controlled by the orcs." Howard asked, "Which one do you think is the reason?"

"It's not like they couldn't detonate the ammunition, even if the ammunition boxes were occupied by orcs. When I examined their bodies, I found grenades on many of them. They could have thrown a single grenade there and set the munitions off. Although this crude method couldn't detonate all the explosives at once, which would have been wasteful, it was enough to kill all the orcs in the area. However..." Gloria also began to recall the details of the ammunition boxes, "But I didn't see any signs that they had even tried."

"It's not that they can't detonate the bomb, but that they don't want to. Sister, do you think they lack the courage to drag the enemy to death with them?" Howard asked.

"There may be such cowards among them, but they are definitely not the majority," the nun said. "As long as one person thinks of this in a critical moment, they will not just try like this."

"Is it because they couldn't think of destroying themselves and the enemy by detonating the ammunition?" Howard asked again.

"If I can think of it, they can definitely think of it too." The nun gradually realized that something was wrong: "I take back my previous evaluation of them. I was arrogant."

"The courage and intelligence of these soldiers are beyond doubt, yet they clearly had the opportunity to take the orcs with them, but they chose not to do so," Howard said. "There is only one explanation: there were more important things that outweighed this, and for this reason, they did not do it."

"Detonating those munitions in a situation where their lives are certain would only have two negative consequences for those soldiers. First, their bodies might be destroyed by the explosion; second, the cave might collapse. Of course, there's a third possibility... such as being discovered by other forces."

At this point, Howard observed May's reaction. Regardless of whether she was dead or alive, humans and orcs had already started a war, so there was no question of whether she was exposed in front of the orcs. Therefore, the "other existences" Howard mentioned naturally referred to the elves other than humans and orcs.

"Both possibilities are possible," the nun said. "Until now, we still don't know what this strange underground passage is used for. Perhaps it's a secret passage dug secretly by the Empire? It has a very important purpose that we don't know about?"

You really are talented at eliminating wrong answers.

Howard complained in his heart.

"Sister, look around here. Does it look like it was dug by humans? Does it look like it was only recently dug?" Howard asked. "And even if they blew up the land, you saw they were carrying explosives. Are they worried about blocking the road?"

"But they don't care whether their bodies are intact after death, unless they still carry..." The nun was suddenly stunned when she said this.

They really give you the answer and you copy it, but it takes you a long time to find the corresponding question.

"Eliminate all impossibilities, and what remains is the truth." Howard spread his hands and said, "And this truth is not absurd."

"If that's true, then everything makes sense," Howard said. "Humans came here and found something, then encountered the orcs, and all died. That thing was so important that the humans didn't choose to die with the orcs at the last moment, because detonating the explosives might also destroy the thing while killing the orcs."

"But didn't you say before that they might have defeated the orcs, so they didn't detonate the explosives?" the nun asked again.

"Left hand." Howard's answer confused the nun for a moment, but fortunately he explained later: "The mechanical priest who died in the battle had guns on both sides, but he only drew the right gun. What was he doing with his left hand?"

This was the only thing Howard didn't see when he profiled him just now. He reproduced the movements of the Mechanical Priest before his death, but his left hand was always covered with a layer of fog.

But once the rest of the puzzle is complete, it becomes clear what the remaining missing piece represents.

"He was holding something very important in his left hand at the time, so he didn't draw his gun to fight," Howard speculated. "It was precisely to protect this important object from being damaged that these soldiers would rather die than detonate the explosives."

"If humans ultimately emerged victorious in this local war, the object on the deceased Mechanical Priest's left hand should have been taken away by humans. But what we saw was that the Mechanical Priest's left hand was completely chopped off." Howard looked at the nun and said, "Miss Gloria, when you take something from a fallen comrade, do you chop off his hand directly?"

The nun shook her head, then she sighed and said, "You're right."

"We won't speculate why the orcs would fight humans here, but we can at least confirm that this item is also very important to humans." Howard looked at Mei. "Miss Mei, you said earlier that you came here to find something very important to your race, and we've just deduced that the soldiers here have obtained something very important to humans as well. According to probability theory, the probability of two unrelated items, both important to humans and the Eldar, appearing on this planet simultaneously is extremely small. Therefore, I have reason to believe that not long ago, when the Mechanical Priest was still alive, he held in his left hand the very thing your race was seeking."

After Howard finished speaking, the surroundings fell silent again. May stared at Howard, her eyes flickering slightly. After a while, the Eldar spoke: "Mr. Howard, I also think your analysis is correct."

"That's unfortunate," Howard said. "It seems that whatever this thing is, it has fallen into the hands of the orcs."

"I might have to chop you guys."

At this moment the nun suddenly blurted out these words.