"How far are we from the territory of the bats?"
Yvraine asked impatiently because after several days, crossing seven factions that dwelled in the Bone Mountains and annihilated four of them, as they were essentially enemies of the Hall of Kadath or the Nesser Dynasty or even if they weren't outright enemies, they were hostile, their target destination was still relatively far away from them.
During their warpath, Samiel decided to change the target and went for reconnection with Dharzug and Juulius, who were leading the orks to wage war against the bats. This was something that he learned as they approached closer and closer to the territory of the bats who worshipped the Great God of Blood Andruil.
Apparently, out of nowhere or rather from the underground, one nice and sunny day, like there was any kind of different environment here, thousands of orks appeared and started killing their way through the territory of the vampires.
Ironically though, on their first day, they managed to kill one of their leaders, who was apparently half-blooded Kindred and bastard of the Pale Blood, which was most shocking to itself, as even Yvraine was shocked by this news that someone like that was in a place like this.
Samiel opted for the reconnection with the two of them, mainly because together they would have a much bigger army and thus a much bigger possibility, not to mention they would finish the vampires as first and then move on to the Church of Lolth or the CUlt of the Fallen Prince, because they are pre-occupied with the conquest of the other territories.
"I told you that we still need to cross another four passes and three valleys when we got there... so yes, we are still far."
Samiel answered because right now, as Juulius was in the Bone Mountains, he instantly contacted him through his Holo-Brain as they started coordinating their advance to produce better results and increase their efficiency.
"I still cannot believe that those two are working together and being civil..."
Yvraine muttered as Samiel could just nod in agreement, also finding the situation pretty much surreal because he was deeply aware of the hatred that Juulius and his entire lineage had for anything even remotely connected to the greenskins.
"Apparently, in front of the common benefits, they are forced to work together. Still, I am surprised that they got control over the ork horde."
Samiel was also surprised that Juuloius could control himself in that situation because he hated the orks more than anything in the world, but at the same time, it was clear that he knew how to control himself.
If not, then he would certainly be disappointed in his retainer because one needed to be able to divide his personal feelings and professionalism towards the situation. In the situation that he found himself, working with the orks was the only opinion on how to complete the mission successfully; thus Samiel was glad that his retainer / personal knight was someone competent.
Naturally, if he wasn't, then he wouldn't be assigned to him by the Hall Master of the Hall of Kadath.
"They are right now wreaking havoc through the territory of bats... and worshippers of the Andruil are not weak... apparently, there are even forces of the Great Aristocratic Families of the Congregations aside from the normal soldiers of the Church of Blood."
Samiel said as they were approaching the territory of another of the factions; this one was a small group of natives of the Bone Mountains; thus Samiel decided to ignore them by passing them because they were essentially worthless.
He wasn't keen on wasting time on attacking factions that would give him nothing; he would gladly leave that job to the forces of the Church of Lolth or Cult of the Fallen Prince... at least they would lose some troops while attacking them.
"Certainly, working with orks must have been tedious and problematic at best... I still wonder how they managed to control the horde to act as something more than just a bunch of below barbaric creatures."
Yvraine said, scoffing at the thought; she too wasn't that big fan of orks; ironically though, she could too be considered an ork hater, but most elves were. Elvenkind as species had some sort of innate and racial distaste, disgust and in many cases, even hatred towards the Orkkind...
Still, her hatred was nowhere near that of Juulius, where it was apparently passed from one generation to another, as it was passed like some kind of heritage... some noble lineages passed weapons or so; Crawford Family was passing to each other hatred against greenskins...
"Fortunately, they are doing good, not only good, but their chosen approach combined with luck is like heaven-sent to Advancement Quest we have... not only that, but if what I suspect is the truth about Dharzug's plan, then he plans to conquer the entirety of the Bone Mountains to create his own Klan."
Yvraine looked at her man with a raised brow, because he could see the pattern in this action... orks were peculiar species; even if the starting point of the Klan creation was only that much as ten orks, within a few years, they would be in hundreds.
The reproduction speed of the greenskins was absolutely frightening, not to mention Samiel knew that the horde that Dharzug currently was leading even had some goblins, which certainly did help the stability of the orks because at least they had whom to abuse.
"I still don't like it... bringing civilization to the orks could spell absolute disaster for the entire Material Plane of Cosmos..."
Yvraine frowned from the side, still not agreeing with his approach, but Samiel didn't care too much for her concerns because he knew how this was going to end anyway... In the end, he was aware of the fact that Dharzug won't be ever allowed by the Green Gods of Gork and Mork mainly to truly unify the orks and uplift them as a whole race.
Nobody among the Transcendents would allow it... because that would be breaking the game and nobody wanted to break the game... this was something that his master told Samiel and while he didn't truly understand the meaning of the words, he suspected something from them, mainly the fact that everything would be okey.
"Let them be... your deepest concerns will never be fulfilled, so you don't have to worry about that things..."
Samiel stated already for the third time today as they continued climbing through the mountain range as they, bypassed the locals and went further toward the position where the orks under Dharzug and Juulius were currently waging waaaggghhh.
"I still propose that we should kill them before they multiply."
She said as they climbed through another huge rock and decided to rest for a bit while observing how the locals that were living in the nearby valley started fighting against each other for some food or alcohol, to which Samiel greatly enjoyed the show.
Even Yvraine did enjoy seeing humans squirt and fighting to the death for some scraps of food... he had to admit that in a situation like this, she was greatly sadistic and enjoyed torturing humans and humiliating them.
"And you tell me that I am a sadist..."
Samiel stated as he observed how Yvraine enjoyed the humans killing each other while she looked at him with a smirk.
"Yes, you are... especially in bed when you take me..."
She literarily purred in his ear; hearing and seeing that, he knew that he had lost this round of argumentation as they, after several more minutes of resting, proceeded with traveling through the Bone Mountains, climbing through them and passing through valley passes as they were approaching the "territory" of the orks.
Suddenly as they were passing through a tight mountain pass, Samiel saw something which made him almost jump from joy and, at the same time, frown because he saw an ork. And clearly, the ork saw him too as he ran towards them, but it didn't attack and instead started screaming something in orkish as Samiel answered him.
During the time Sameil spent with Dharzug, he learned the basics of the Orkish as it was a pretty crude language that had too much of usage of the word "waaaggghhh" and aside from that, there was a lot of cursing.
But fortunately, Samiel knew enough as he exchanged a few words with the ork, while Yvraine watched from the side and observed their communication while being ready in case this delved into combat... nobody could predict what orks would do.
After the initial conversation, Samiel managed to find out that this was indeed the ork under Dharzug and evidently, all orks were ordered to search for someone of Samiel's and Yvraine's descriptions and lead them back to their main camp.
He nodded at Yvraine as they followed after the Ork Boy to the main camp of Dharzug's orks; as they were right now in the battlezone against the Vampires, apparently from what he was told by the Ork Boy, the orks only managed to get to this part of the Bone Mountains a few days ago and clean it up.
Unfortunately for the orks, they still faced incoming attacks from the bats as they were attempting to reconquer the territory they lost. Some of them were clearly not taking their loss very well, especially considering the fact that they lost to the orks... that must have been humiliating to the proud Kindreds that were leading the bats here.
They passed through several more paths and after approximately forty minutes of more traveling through the mountains, they finally arrived at the main camp of the orks, as Samiel saw countless orks running here and there, bolstering the defenses around the camp, building fortifications and doing the typical jobs related to building a new outpost.
"My Lord, I am glad that you are well."
Samiel heard the voice of his retainer Juulius Crawford as he turned around and saw him dropping on his right knee, immediately greeting his liege with a proper etiquette of a sworn knight. He just motioned him to get up from his knees, as Juulius then followed tightly after, leading him to the main tent where Dharzug was discussing the next steps with the rest of the ork leaders who had more brain cells.
Hearing that, Samiel wondered how much compared to the normal orks... if the normal Ork had an intelligence level of 1, then smart would be what? 1,5 or 2, perhaps... who knew?
Naturally, among orks, there would be those who were more intelligent than the others and those specimens were normally responsible for planning the attacks, operations and other things for the Klan or Tribe or even the entire Horde if one was established.