Juulius appeared in front of the Kindred man in a flash as he slashed at him with his sword, forcing him to block by condensing shield made out of blood, but this didn't deter Juulius a bit as he continued to attack the Kindred man all over, summoning down the bits of the Divine Power of the Crawling Chaos.
Dharzug looked at this pretty annoyed but didn't say anything because while he was ork through and through, but contrary to many, if not most of the other orks, he knew when and what to do because he was aware that the Kindred man was holding back something from the battle and knew that he wasn't going all out.
Not talking about the fact, he suspected that Juulius must have recognized what was going on and thus let him intervene in the single coémbat. Normally, when someone intervened in the single combat of an ork against his foe, the orks would throw a fit of rage and typically kill everything in their surroundings...
Juulius maintained eye contact with the Dharzug and while he didn't hold any kind of good emotions about the orks whom he was essentially saving, during the time he was with Dharzug, Juulius learned to rein his distaste and hatred for the greenskins, though, at the same time, he found out that they were not that one-dimensional like they seemed on the first glance.
Normally, many people thought about orks that they were one-dimensional creatures that only new one thing, which was waging Waaaggghhh and nothing else. Yes, it was a pretty understandable viewpoint on the orks because their behavior, society or anything didn't seem to say anything otherwise about their 'kultur'.
Juulius Crawford met many orks during his relatively short life and most of them were like the common stereotypes were about them. They were crude, stupid, brutish and knew only how to destroy.
He didn't know if he should be delighted or frightened that ork like Dharzug existed, somebody who wanted to bring real civilization to the orks, something beyond their typical waaaggghhhs and destruction of everything that wasn't them. It was so fascinating and yet it was so terrifying and frightening even to consider orks getting civilized and learning how to create...
With their number, their industrial capabilities could be absolutely out of nothing that the Material Plane of the Cosmos has ever seen before. Still, if such orkish civilization could be reasoned a bit, then it would create a space for diplomacy, and space for diplomacy created the possibility for negotiation, which in turn created the possibility for the alliance between them and the "civilized orks".
'Attack with everything you got; we need to kill him before he activates his final stand; this is not ordinary Kindred but the bastard of a Pale Blood!'
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtJuulius instantaneously sent a mental message to Dharzug, who grimaced as he grit his enormous lower teeth that looked like the ones of the sabertooth when he received it because the situation was worse than he anticipated and it confirmed his suspicion about the human Templar Knight who knew that something was going on.
Bursting out with a new wave of power, Dharzug flashed in front of the Kindred man and attacked him once again with his waraxe 'Da Big Choppa', cathing him unprepared, using the element of surprise on his side as his waraxe hit his chest and created enormous cract on his plate silver armor, that started cracking all around.
Juulius seeing this, used this opportunity to stab the Kindred man through one small crack, piercing through his lungs, as the Kindred man coughed a mouthful of blood. This was an example of perfect coordination in combat as they managed to wound the Kindred man severely, but not wasting any more time, Juulius summoned all the power he could as he sent a wave of the Divine Power of the Chaos into the body of the Kidnred man which was still pierced by his sword.
Almost instantaneously, one could see countless black lines spreading through the body of the Kindred man as his body started morphing into some kind of mutated monstrosity in real time, enlarging in size almost ten times in several seconds before it started pulsating violently, to which Dharzug conjured some kind of Divine Shield as the enormous body of what used to be the Kindred man exploded into bloody dust.
"That was a close call..."
Juulius sighed when he confirmed that the Kindred man was killed... this was indeed surprising because he would never suspect some half-blooded Pale Blood was here; considering other circumstances, Juulius was sure that it was a bastard child of someone from the Great Aristocratic Houses.
"Who would have thought that we would encounter a Pale Blood even if it wasn't a Pure-Blooded one..."
Interestingly enough, which was pretty surprising, even bastards of the Pale Blood and their half-bloods weren't normally allowed to leave the Holy City because they all had the potential to evolve into Pure-Blooded Pale Bloods with the Blessings of the Blood Gods.
So seeing on here was most interesting and Juulius suspected that it was either due to politics of the Great Aristocratic Houses or someone just escaped from home... though he rooted for the second one because Pale Bloods were too rare and too important for the Congregation to just allow them wantonly leave the Holy City.
"We need to clean out the battlefield and move towards some defendable position... if more bats arrive, we are fucked up; right now, we are in the enemy territory."
Juulous said while Dharzug grumbled but still agreed with the Templar Knight because he was aware that right now their first priority should be the securement of the base of operation, somewhere where they could defend it very well.
Normally orks didn't bother with such inconsequential things, but under Dharzug's leadership, things were going to be pretty different as he started bossing around the orks. Fortunately, only a few tens of orks were killed during the battle, something little above a hundred, which was a relatively good result, considering the fact they faced around 70 vampires.
And the bats were much better prepared and were individually stronger, but Juulius taught orks to utilize their numerical advantage better, just compared to the simple "overwhelm them with numbers" thing of strategy.
The good thing for the orks was the fact that it didn't take them even an hour to find a suitable place which was, according to Juulius's standards, good enough to build a provisionary fortress, as they started building a fort in one of the mountains that had only three exits.
It was in a better position than the rest of the things that Juulius considered for the provisionary fort that would serve as their point for the expansion towards the Bone Mountains.
Not to mention, it was empty from the inside, probably used as some sort of housing in the past, considering it was naturally created. It was perfect for their purposes because they didn't need to do everything from scratch and at the same time, it would be much faster done compared to the situation where they would be building from nothing.
Naturally, the orks brought all necessary materials together with them, so the construction process was going very fast when somebody was commanding them and just within six hours of hard, non-stop works, the preliminary defenses were already in place and the fort was already steadily growing.
During the time that the orks were building the forts, Juulius was interrogating the prisoners, which were, unfortunately for him, only two barely surviving vampires who were lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the orkish horde that was going through their positions.
With a little bit of torture, Juuliuhs was able to learn everything relevant and against whom they were standing in the Bone Mountains, as he took his words for taken and anticipated the challenge.
Juulius was delighted to learn that in this place, there was one of the bigger branches of the Cult of the Fallen Prince, Daemon Sitri and even the Church of Spider Queen Lolth, both of which were enemies of the Hall of Kadath.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmWith this information, Juulius went to Dharzug so they could prepare for their next moves. Not only that, but he also learned that the three major powers in the Bone Mountains, which were actually the Cult of the Fallen Prince, the Church of Lolth and the bats, were actually planning to attack all remaining factions within the Bone Mountains and divide the entire area in three.
This was even better than he initially anticipated because all of them were prepared for the offensive war and not the defensive one, meaning if they were attacked right now, their defensive capabilities would be very low and they could catch them unprepared and if they attacked hard enough, they could even cripple bats out of right from their first attack.
***
One day later, the basic fort in the empty mountain that was hollow from the inside was finished and the orks were already preparing for the great Waaaggghhh that their boss promised them, as each of them was gearing up, polishing their weapons to be in the best state possible and adjusting their armors to meet their foes on the battlefield.
"Can we finally depart?"
Juulius asked as he watched the ork getting prepared for the Waaaggghhh; as the ork boss nodded his huge head, looking toward the distance of the territory ruled by the Vampires in the Bone Mountains.
"Yar! Waaaggghhh!"
Dharzug then roared for all orks to hear the most important word in the orkish vocabulary, the word of 'waaaggghhh' or how everyone else would understand it, the war. It was the essential word and sometimes the only word that the orks learned during their whole lives.
It was a call for every ork to come, take their weapon, stop being a pansy git and stand their ground as it was time to wage waaaggghhh and slaughter the enemies. Most often, it was the sole reason for what the orks existed.
"Listen's her ya pansy gits! We'r marchin to waaaggghhh and Gork bless this moment as we'n gonna give them hell! We'ze Orks! We'ze made for waaaggghhh, fightin and winnin! And even if we doie, we still win as we'r orks! That is of what we are made of! Waaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!"
Dharzug shouted for every ork to hear, as each of them stiffened by hearing the sacred phrase stated by their boss as the morale started rising and the ork started hitting the ground with their weapons in anticipation for good combat.
As Juulius listed to something which sounded like a really, really crappy motivational speech, shockingly or not to the orks, it was a live heaven-sent prophet was speaking to them, as the morale skyrocketed ad they were cheering for their boss by roaring and hitting the ground with their weapons.