The next day.
Al jolted awake from a nightmare.
He had dreamed that an elite imperial expeditionary force descended from the heavens like gods and attacked the Revelers tribe. Every beastman, including the centaur girl, was slaughtered. Only he was spared because his appearance was indistinguishable from a human.
But the real horror came afterward.
Al was recognized as the Eternal Champion and was to be escorted to Altdorf for a public trial and execution. Along the way he was locked in a cage and hidden inside a tent.
Suddenly a big bald man lifted the tent flap and walked in, followed one after another by generals, more bald men, and witch hunters.
A voice laughing wildly from nowhere boomed: "These four are the cream of the crop in the heretic interrogation world. They're called the 'Four Inquisitors.' Believe me, they can bring endless torment to you, the Eternal Champion, wahahaha!"
"In the field of interrogating heretics, they are the equivalent of Teclis in the world of magic and Tyrion in the world of warriors!"
Al watched them bring out muskets, cannons, grenade launchers, steam tanks, and sky-ships one after another.
"You! Don't come any closer!"
"Four Gods save me!"
"Good thing it was just a dream…" Al comforted himself, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He was surprised to discover that his whole body felt tightly bound. Looking closer, he realized his clothes had become much shorter.
He stood up, raised his hands, and made a few gestures. To his delight, he really had grown much taller than yesterday.
Al tried jumping and throwing punches. His strength had clearly increased as well. He ran through many things in his mind again, and his way of thinking showed no obvious change from after he left the Realm of Ecstasy yesterday. It seemed the Four Gods had kept their promise.
At this rate of growth, Al would soon no longer have to survive in this extremely dangerous Order mortal world as a mere tribe cub.
The centaur girl woke up too. She stood up, still looking down at Al from above, but this time a trace of confusion appeared in her eyes.
"You've grown?"
The centaur girl sounded uncertain.
"Yeah."
Al was delighted.
"So fast…"
There was a tiny note of disappointment in the centaur girl's voice, but it was quickly hidden. She still reached out, easily picked Al up, lifted him overhead, placed him on her horse back, and walked outside.
Al noticed something else: even though he had slept the whole night, there was no sticky fluid on his body, and the moment he opened his eyes he felt completely refreshed, without any morning grogginess.
Full of energy!
The centaur girl carried him wandering through the tribe. The beastmen they saw were either the Chaos-worshipping chaos-tainted beasts that used to follow Zharkhan or the smaller number of rage-tainted beasts who had converted to the Bloodmother with Alina. A very small portion of the All-Things Shepherd god faction quietly avoided the tall centaur and the now human-teenager-looking Al, refusing direct contact.
It seemed Zharkhan's Chaos-granted prophecy still affected the other clueless beastmen. Perhaps even the All-Things Shepherd believers, including Thar, couldn't clearly distinguish between the Bloodmother and Khorne.
The crisis of self-identity was temporarily gone, so the focus now had to shift to completing the main quest.
The End Times.
Al silently repeated the ultimate main quest the New Four Gods (from now on collectively called the New Four Gods or Four Mothers to differentiate) had assigned him—the final war that would decide the fate of the New Four Gods and this insignificant mortal.
"Sigh, if only I had seriously looked at all those downloaded materials about basic engineering, smelting, and manufacturing before the 20th century."
Al's main major in the institute had been networking. His personal electives were a mess of traditional folklore, military theory, Old World history, early intelligent network development, and so on. Except for military theory, where he had scraped together some extremely basic and often wrong knowledge from playing games, everything else seemed basically useless in this world.
The things he learned were from 2075 textbooks, focused on application. Without the supporting hardware, they were mostly useless knowledge.
"If I had gone into engineering with Wells, maybe it would be useful now." Al sighed inwardly, but there was nothing he could do.
Riding the centaur girl around the tribe a few times gave him the illusion of a chieftain inspecting his territory. Theoretically, in the old Revelers tribe this was actually accurate. Among Chaos-worshipping beastmen, whoever was strongest was the boss. Before it had been Zharkhan. After Al killed Zharkhan, naturally it became…
Alina.
So was he now equivalent to the Beastlord's husband? Or cub?
Al's mind was in chaos. The End Times hung over his head like the Sword of Damocles. The New Four Gods were four peeping LYBs, watching him while constantly plotting schemes and tricks with both hands.
And the orthodox Four Gods of Chaos—who knew when they would discover, or perhaps had already discovered, Al's existence.
The four of them were two sides of the same coin, seemingly wrestling with themselves and unable to do anything to each other, only able to fight openly and secretly. But to Al, who probably couldn't even beat an average Chaos cultist, they could crush the true Eternal Champion effortlessly.
It was only because Chaos had receded. Otherwise any evil god could open a portal, send a daemon legion, wipe out the entire Revelers tribe, and drag Al back to the Realm of Chaos for eighteen kinds of torture.
His head hurt from thinking. Al pinched his own cheeks hard, warning himself to calm down. No matter how terrifying something was, he still had to face it. He didn't want to get a game over in the End Times, so he had to fight for it.
From the corner of his eye he caught a graceful figure not far away.
Selesthin sat outside the cave, gazing at Al from a distance.
At her feet was stuck the short sword that had almost slit Al's throat—the highest achievement as a mortal weapon in the hands of Order forces:
Killing the Eternal Champion.
If he really got his throat cut like that, it would feel even more humiliating than not being chosen at all. Even if he got resurrected and won the End Times, daemons would probably still mock him:
See that? That Eternal Champion who got his throat slit by his own mother with a little knife right after birth. Just a little kid who only came back thanks to the Four Gods' blessing.
Al's thoughts were wandering badly. He quickly tossed the messy fantasies aside and signaled the centaur girl to walk over. He wanted to say something to his biological mother and at least settle this once and for all.
Al was the Eternal Champion. Whether the New Four Gods or the old Four Gods, they were ultimately Chaos. Until he had enough strength, saying things like "I lean toward Order" or "New Chaos fights old Chaos to save the world from the End Times" was useless.
His mother was a saint who had held onto her Sigmar faith through half a year of corruption. Their identities, factions, and positions were naturally opposed. Before Al could march into Altdorf with a hundred thousand troops like Vlad to support the throne, there was probably no room for reconciliation.
Al didn't deserve it, the Empire wouldn't bother, and they didn't even know such a person existed yet.
So better to cut it off cleanly. If he softened and one day got stabbed to death by his own mom, he'd become the reverse Lordaeron filial son and die of laughter.
Man and horse arrived in front of Selesthin. The woman did not stand up, nor did she make any other movement. She simply stared silently at Al.
"I…"
Al opened his mouth, then realized he really didn't know what to say. Biologically Selesthin was his mother, but in reality they had never had any interaction (his begging while held by the throat didn't count). There was no emotion between them. To her, he was a child forced upon her, and the child she gave birth to was a Chaos spawn who was the great enemy of Order. From both race and faith, she had every reason to kill him at all costs.
Forget it.
"We'll send you back to a human city in the next two days… You can find your own way back, right?"
Al still couldn't help asking one more question. Selesthin just stared at him silently, then lowered her head to look at the short sword at her feet.
That movement made Al's hair stand on end. He almost wanted to run around the pillar, but luckily he was on the centaur girl. Given the combat power gap, the chance of Selesthin bypassing the centaur girl to kill Al should be close to zero.
So he steadied himself and decided not to entangle himself in this complicated relationship any longer.
The goat girl's milk smelled just as sweet and was safe.
Motherly love?
The centaur girl's love was already more than he could handle.
"Anyway, that's it…"
So Alina started to take him away.
After Al had been honest with her, the centaur girl no longer wanted to see him "conquer" Selesthin. To her, Al was already her boy now, and even if Selesthin was tied up and delivered to the bed, there was still some danger.
"If possible… I didn't want to appear in this world either, but since I came, I will do my best to live."
Al spoke a few final words.
"I am not the same as the daemons you know."
"At least not right now."