Chapter 168: Getting Dirty For Vaal’kor

Swish!

Four trees tipped over almost simultaneously, their trunks splitting beneath the force of the attack before crashing flat onto the ground. The impact shook the surrounding earth violently, sending loose leaves and dust into the air while several birds burst from the branches of nearby trees.

Everyone immediately turned toward Ka’z, who stood in the middle of the clearing with four enormous blood axes revolving around him. Each weapon spun rapidly through the air, suspended entirely by his mana, the crimson blades catching the afternoon sunlight as they moved in perfect circles around his body.

Mi’ya immediately abandoned whatever she had been doing and ran toward him with excitement practically radiating from her face.

"So fucking cool." She reached for one of the spinning axes, and Ka’z casually altered its trajectory.

The weapon slowed before coming to a complete stop, hovering gently in front of her before settling into her hands. Mi’ya’s eyes sparkled as she gripped the weapon tightly and immediately swung it through the air several times, completely ignoring the fact that she had nearly cut the ground beneath her feet.

"Look at this! It’s so light!" she exclaimed, twisting the weapon around with growing enthusiasm.

Ka’z watched her with a mixture of amusement and concern as she experimented with the weapon.

"If we ever met someone this capable with Blood Magic, it could have been over for us," Kurg said as he approached, keeping a respectful distance from the other spinning axes.

He crouched slightly and examined the weapons with genuine curiosity. Unlike Mi’ya, he had no intention of grabbing one without permission. He could feel the strange density of the magic packed into the crimson constructs, and the fact that Ka’z could maintain four simultaneously while continuing to work made him appreciate just how much control his friend had developed.

Drak approached Mi’ya and carefully extended one finger toward the edge of the blood axe she was holding. He barely brushed the blade before immediately pulling his hand back.

A thin line of blood appeared across his fingertip. Drak stared at it for a moment before frowning.

"And it’s much sharper than normal weapons, too," he mumbled, wiping the blood against his clothing.

The observation immediately attracted the attention of several warriors nearby, who began looking at the blood weapons with renewed interest.

"Make us some too!" Bigi suddenly shouted.

He abandoned the axe that was still buried halfway inside a tree and hurried toward Ka’z with an expression of complete determination.

"Me too!" Bruk immediately abandoned his own tree and chased after Bigi.

"Guys, hold on, hold on!" Ka’z shouted as the two large kobolds approached him, only for the rest of his team to begin closing in as well.

"I’m using my blood here to do this. I can’t just make you guys a Blood Axe!" His explanation did little to discourage them.

Instead, the entire group surrounded him, several of them staring at the weapons with the same greedy excitement Mi’ya had displayed only moments earlier. Ka’z could already see where this was going, and the expression on his face slowly changed from amusement to regret.

A short distance away, Tu’ka, Ru’k, Kurg and Za’r watched the chaos alongside another ten warriors. There was something different about Ka’z whenever he was surrounded by those particular ten kobolds. They teased him without hesitation, interrupted him whenever they wanted, argued with him over the smallest things and treated him less like their leader and more like a troublesome brother they had somehow been forced to tolerate.

It was impossible to miss the closeness between them.

Ru’k stared at the group for several seconds before quietly muttering, "It’s like he’s closer to them than he is to us."

Bam!

Za’r gently punched him on the shoulder. "Don’t say that. You know that’s not true. It’s just that there is something that comes from going through life and death together. Their bond is unique." She tried to sound reassuring, but her eyes betrayed her.

They remained fixed on Mi’ya, who was casually talking to Ka’z while swinging the Blood Axe around as though the two had grown up together. Za’r knew Ka’z cared about her deeply, but watching the effortless familiarity between him and his original team still stirred a small amount of jealousy inside her.

"Hey... Hey, no pulling, you bastards!" Ka’z suddenly screamed.

Ru’k and Za’r looked back just in time to see Thrak and Tark each holding onto one of Ka’z’s arms while trying to drag the Blood Axes away from him.

Ka’z had grabbed both weapons with his hands, desperately trying to keep them from being stolen while the rest of the team laughed around him. Thrak had one foot planted firmly against the ground while Tark leaned backward with all his weight, both of them grinning like children who had discovered something valuable.

"What are you all worried about?" Tu’ka said in his usual dry voice as he watched them. "We are the ones who know the secret hideouts. We are the ones who made an oath with him to build a kingdom under the full moon. They are his friends and we are his family. There is a distinction."

Kurg nodded in agreement. "Yep... There is. You don’t need to worry about anything. What we have with him is for life. We are the ones he drank with all through last night in his most vulnerable moments. That’s something you only do with family."

Tu’ka nodded once, apparently satisfied with his explanation.

Ru’k and Za’r exchanged glances before their expressions softened. The jealousy that had briefly appeared in their eyes faded, replaced by embarrassed smiles.

Za’r quietly laughed at herself while Ru’k scratched the back of his head. Perhaps Tu’ka was right. There were different kinds of bonds, and Ka’z had simply accumulated them through different stages of his life.

Meanwhile, Ka’z’s situation had deteriorated completely.

Thrak and Tark finally managed to pull him off balance, dragging him onto the ground while laughing like lunatics. They proudly held the two Blood Axes above their heads as they walked away.

"If you thought us magic, it wouldn’t have come to this!" Thrak laughed.

"Scoundrel, we have been building a fucking village!" Ka’z shouted from the ground, his hair covered in dirt.

"Excuses!" Tark replied, rolling his eyes.

"What?!" Ka’z nearly spat blood from annoyance.

The rest of his original team burst into laughter before walking away, clearly satisfied with themselves. Ka’z remained on the ground for several seconds, staring after them with an expression of disbelief. Then he noticed two figures still standing directly in front of him.

Bigi and Bruk. Both had their hands stretched toward him, staring at him expectantly.

Ka’z finally sighed. "Alright, alright!"

He rolled his eyes and raised his hand. A thin stream of blood immediately jetted from his fingertips, splitting into two separate streams that twisted through the air. The blood rapidly thickened and hardened, taking shape as two large crimson axes. Their handles formed first, followed by the heavy heads and razor sharp edges. Within seconds, the weapons were complete.

Bigi and Bruk grabbed their respective axes with glowing eyes and immediately ran back toward their trees as though they had just been handed legendary weapons capable of destroying the world. They approached their targets with ridiculous levels of enthusiasm and began chopping with enough force to make Ka’z question whether giving them the weapons had been a mistake.

"Gosh, they are so exhausting," Ka’z mumbled while remaining on the ground.

Tu’ka approached him with Za’r, Kurg and Ru’k following behind. Now that Ka’z was finally alone, Tu’ka glanced toward the portion of land they had already cleared.

Several large trees had been cut down, leaving an expanding stretch of open ground beneath the afternoon sun. The work was progressing quickly, but the forest ahead remained enormous. If they wanted the military camp to become functional, they still had a considerable amount of land to clear.

Tu’ka looked back toward Ka’z. "These cavalry forces you insist on building, what are they?"

Ka’z briefly glanced at him before turning his attention toward the hot afternoon sun pouring down through the canopy. Without the shade of the surrounding trees, the work would have been several times harder.

Sweat already covered the bodies of the warriors who had been cutting trees manually, while the shade provided by the remaining forest was quickly becoming their most valuable resource.

"According to the Red Scripture, there are five important units that make up a well composed army," Ka’z began.

He pushed himself off the ground and sat cross legged while the others gathered around him. "We have the infantry, archers, cavalry, artillery and magus units."

Ru’k silently counted the categories with his fingers before looking toward Ka’z. "We have three out of five."

Ka’z nodded. "Exactly."

"What is this artillery unit?" Kurg asked curiously.

Ka’z rubbed his chin while searching for the right way to explain it. "They are literally things people build to help them attack walls or people. The prince talked about something called a trebuchet in his book. It is a war machine that throws large boulders at people."

Everyone around him immediately went pale.

"Boulders?" Za’r asked, staring at him. "You are exaggerating, right?"

"I wish I was." Ka’z shook his head. "The book doesn’t describe how to build them, so there’s not much we can do about that right now. But what we can do is build our cavalry forces. The stronger and more organized our military becomes, the better our chances of surviving what’s coming."

Everyone slowly nodded. Their expressions remained distant as they tried to imagine a machine capable of launching enormous rocks across a battlefield. Even Kurg looked unsettled.

"Humans are scary," he finally muttered.

Ka’z chuckled.

He wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate to reveal the existence of the Dwarves.

According to what he had learned from the Red Scripture, the Dwarves were considered one of the most formidable races in Athedal, not necessarily because of their natural magical abilities, but because of their mastery of machinery and warfare. The things they constructed went far beyond simple trebuchets. The book talked about tanks and enormous humanoid machines that towered over ordinary people. Weapons capable of turning battlefields into scenes of absolute destruction.

Luthor D’ Lanthor had almost nothing good to say about them.

Even through the prince’s writing, Ka’z could feel the fear behind his descriptions. Luthor had been fascinated by knowledge, but there were some subjects where his curiosity was accompanied by unmistakable caution. The Dwarves were one of them.

Ka’z decided that revealing their existence now would only raise more questions than he was prepared to answer.

"Alright, guys," he said as he pushed himself to his feet. "We need to get this military camp running as soon as possible. Let’s get back to work."

He dusted the dirt from his clothes and started toward the next section of forest. Tu’ka immediately followed, and the others quickly returned to their tasks.