In distant Earth, the 17th century—an era of sharp tears.
To make up for insufficient troops, the Jurchens of the Northeast specifically sent people into the wild black mountains and white waters to capture "wild Jurchens" and draft them into the Eight Banners.
The method the New Four Gods gave Al to solve the population problem was exactly the same as Great Qing:
Capture population.
If the civilized Jurchens could capture wild Jurchens, then beastmen who believed in the New Four Gods could capture newly corrupted or Shepherd-believing beastmen, right?
The Stone of Gestation had another function. After absorbing Al's Eternal Champion blood and being placed upon the eight-pointed star altar, it could attract beastmen from outside the tribe to naturally gather toward the aura of Chaos power and the Mother of Fertility.
Then they would be captured and "kindly converted," becoming followers of the New Four Gods' faith.
Speaking of which, Al remembered there was one very important thing he had forgotten: "religion."
The issue of faith was sometimes important and sometimes not on Earth, but in this world, it was always extremely important.
His direct subordinates—the rage-tainted beasts and centaurs—had begun worshipping the Bloodmother, who symbolized martial valor, glory, and challenge, because of Alina and him. Most of the other beastmen followed the relatively neutral and benevolent All-Things Shepherd faith.
Worship of the All-Knowing One, the Loving Mother, and the Great Reveler was currently at zero.
These matters had mainly been Al's responsibility so far. The more the people in the tribe trusted and worshipped him, the more beastmen would shift their faith toward Al, eventually becoming a third kind of beastman group besides the old Chaos beastmen (including rage-tainted, chaos-tainted, Tzeentch-tainted, Nurgle-tainted, etc.) and the Shepherd believers.
New Beastmen.
Al's naming sense had always been terrible.
But this issue needed to be addressed. Religious work was very important in daily development and military construction. He didn't want his subordinates to be full of traitors. Everyone needed to unite under the banner of the New Four Gods' faith.
Eternal Champion, commands flow downward, the eight-pointed banner unfurls, the great army marches forward!
First, build four altars. Well, given the tribe's level, they should be more like shrines.
Build a high platform with an eight-pointed star base representing Chaos. On top, create four shrines using wood, iron, crystal (temporarily replaced with something else), and silk (they only found a little after searching the whole tribe—Al used it here) to make the symbols of the New Four Gods.
Great! The temple building is complete!
After working hard (mostly directing) for a while, Al looked at the brand-new Four Gods shrines with satisfaction.
He vaguely seemed to hear four soft "ding" sounds.
Bloodmother Shrine up↑! Slight increase to army combat power!
Reveler Shrine up↑! Slight increase to population happiness and birth rate!
All-Knowing Shrine up↑! Slight increase to the chance of spellcasters being born and the flow of the Winds of Magic!
Loving Mother Shrine up↑! Plagues will strengthen your tribe. Slight increase to disease resistance, vitality, and crop growth!
If this were really a game, it would be perfect.
Al shook the fantasy out of his head and sighed.
Ordinary, even overly tribal-abstract shrines couldn't be expected to show any special effects the moment they were built. They would only truly take effect once the New Four Gods had spare power to bless them.
So, should he go back for a nap?
He checked the sky. The sun had already set. Now was the time when the Chaos Moon's mocking smile dominated the heavens.
Speaking of which, the Chaos Moon could corrupt humans and livestock, so why were the Shepherd-believing beastmen unaffected?
Strange…
Al sat by the altar in a daze. A commotion came from the tribe's periphery.
Beastman captains dragged in a group of unfamiliar faces.
With his night vision already granted, Al could clearly see their appearances at a glance. The thought "so soon?" appeared in his mind.
He patted his legs and walked down.
Then this group of captured Chaos beastmen suddenly struggled wildly against their bonds, trying to charge toward Al. Their frenzied appearance clearly wasn't a respectful audience with the Eternal Champion. They probably wanted to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
The tribal beastmen beat them with sticks or the flat sides and handles of weapons, forcing them to calm down a little.
Al was startled by the Chaos beastmen and retreated back onto the altar. He turned his head and glanced at the four shrines of his moms behind him. Anger rose within him.
The Four Gods scaring me is one thing, but a bunch of corrupted Chaos scum dare to bare their teeth at me too.
Fuck! Do they think the Eternal Champion is fake?!
"Tie them all up!"
Al ordered coldly.
Ropes tightened! Mouths gagged!
Facing the Four Gods' shrines, beat them! Beat them hard!
Beat them for half an hour, rest for one hour. Continue until midnight, then stop. Tomorrow morning ask them if they will convert, if they will change their faith!
Only after asking did he learn that this group of Chaos beastmen hadn't simply been drawn here by the Stone of Gestation and Al's blood. Before Al woke up, patrol teams had already discovered traces of other beastmen activity nearby, and the news had already been reported to Alina.
Then, somehow, they had suddenly gotten very close to Al's tribe and were captured in one go by the already vigilant scouts and beastman squads. Two had escaped, and the wolfmen were currently chasing them.
Al calculated in his mind. It seemed the location he had chosen for the new tribe was indeed a geomantic treasure land, which naturally meant it also had neighbors.
A corrupted Chaos beastman tribe.
Weren't they ready-made population?!
The birth of wolf packs was closely tied to the Shepherd. Chaos beastmen rarely had them. Al's tribe currently only had a little over ninety, nearly two-thirds of which were females. He couldn't bear to send them into battle.
However, even just using them as scout units was already excellent. This fast and powerful scouting force was suitable for operating in all kinds of terrain and could give Al an intelligence advantage. It would be very useful against the corrupted Chaos beastmen who, after Chaos receded, had received few blessings and were left only with corruption.
After asking in detail, he learned that the centaur girl had already sent troops to search for traces of this batch of Chaos beastmen. These Chaos kin who were so close might not pose a threat to the centaur girl, but they would be a disaster for the old, weak, women, and children in the tribe.
Chaos beastmen often treated those kin who, in their eyes, had abandoned the Chaos powers even more cruelly than they treated ordinary Order races. They would inflict every torture and cruelty their corrupted brains could imagine upon these orderly kin, savoring their screams and suffering, believing this would allow them to regain the blessings of the Chaos Gods.
Because of their weakened connection to Chaos, most Chaos beastman tribes also lacked Bray-Shamans. Like the previous Revelers chaos-tainted group led by Zharkhan, they only had a Beastlord commanding them.
After sorting out the information on Chaos beastmen, Al sat on the altar.
The golden-blue All-Knowing Eye mark appeared on his forehead, coldly and rationally watching the bound and whipped Chaos beastmen.
Crimson flames burned ceaselessly in Al's eyes. These Chaos scum, suppressed by both instinct and nature, didn't dare look directly at his eyes or the cold eye on his forehead.
"We must inject the advanced, open, harmonious, rational, and martial-virtue-filled faith of the New Four Gods into the corrupted, conservative, backward, extreme, and frail Chaos faith of the old Four Gods!"
Al watched coldly as the Shepherd believers whipped the Chaos kin. He thought:
"Rescue the beastmen who have been corrupted by the old Chaos and are walking the path of destruction. Reform them. Turn them into followers of the New Four Gods' faith and the vanguard of the Eternal Champion, defenders of the mortal world."
The sound of breaking air and whips kissing flesh, accompanied by the howls and mad ravings of the Chaos beastmen, rang out one after another throughout the tribe.
Al didn't know if this would work. Physical conversion might be easy, but winning their hearts was difficult.
But this was a world where material and spiritual could influence each other. Maybe it would work?
Late at night.
Al felt his energy was strangely abundant—perhaps excessively so.
He had worked so hard during the day to please the goat mother and the mare (filial piety).
In the afternoon he had bled for the Stone of Gestation, and in the evening he still had to worry about (physically) the glorious missionary work of the New Four Gods.
Yet he wasn't sleepy at all. He was extremely energetic, as if he wanted to immediately take his eighteen Primarch sons onto the battlefield to launch the Great Crusade.
Al first went to check on the troll enclosure. Under the chieftain's restraint and occasional meat feedings, the river trolls were behaving fairly obediently. They all stayed docile inside the low fences that didn't even reach half their shins.
When the river troll chieftain saw Al, it excitedly tried to approach him, bringing a strong foul stench with it. Al hurriedly sent urgent mental commands for it to retreat, which made it look somewhat aggrieved as it backed away into the enclosure. Then it proudly pushed its fellow trolls aside, signaling Al to come closer.
Although the map showed the river troll chieftain as a solid green dot—meaning it generally wouldn't suddenly betray and break the All-Knowing blessing—out of caution, since the other river trolls were mostly still yellow dots on the map, Al didn't approach directly. He chose a high spot to overlook the center of the camp.
A reversed Khorne mark of the Bloodmother!
The river troll chieftain let out loud "ugh ah ugh ah" cries, seeming very happy that Al had seen its work.
"This guy is not ordinary," Al thought, giving the river troll chieftain a new evaluation.
It had sensed the Chaos aura on Al's Eternal Champion body faster than its duller kin, surrendered in time, quickly changed sides, and seemed to have been influenced by the Bloodmother's call.
It really didn't look like a normal dumb troll!
The river troll chieftain was basically Al's designated future first commander of the troll legion and a Bloodmother believer!
With a troll's terrifying regenerative ability, if it had a slightly smarter brain plus the Bloodmother's blessing reinforcement, it would be an even greater meat grinder than minotaurs or centaurs.
If they could scour the area around the tribe and explored regions and dig up ten trolls…
The Pina Forest was at least ten thousand times larger, not to mention the endless monsters in the Irrana Mountains, the corrupted swamps to the east, Tilea, underground caves, the corrupted forests of Athel Loren…
If Al could conquer all those places and pull out the largest monster legion…
Why resist Chaos? Why fight the End Times?
I am the End Times! I am the Scourge!
The river troll chieftain had shown Al the dawn of a forming troll legion, but this was only the foundation. How effective it would actually be still needed practical testing.
Al had the centaur guards bring over a few hunted beast corpses and personally threw them to the river troll chieftain, watching it devour them with gusto while its slower kin only reacted after the chieftain had almost finished eating. They slowly approached to fight for scraps, only to be pushed aside and knocked down by the chieftain one after another.
He fell into thought again. It was indeed rare for such a dumb creature to occasionally produce something like Thorgrim (the legendary troll from the northern troll kingdom who suddenly gained intelligence, proclaimed himself Troll King, smashed the beautiful prince and pissed on him during the End Times, and verbally owned Nagash so hard the old man was left speechless—the peak of trollkind).
But Al still hoped his tribe would lean toward Order as a whole, simply put, to look somewhat human.
He didn't want them to end up all twisted and grotesque, so that during the final End Times battle even the forces of Order wouldn't know which side to help.
Western Chaos demon army and Eastern Old God followers—that would be too ridiculous.
Even at his worst, he wanted to be an upgraded version of the von Carstein family. That bunch of vampires only had a few people like the Blood Dragons and the family head who looked human, yet they dared call themselves "Kings of Men and Beasts." They couldn't even take Altdorf. Truly embarrassing.
After feeding was done, Al clapped his hands and left, taking several beastman guards to walk along the riverbank.
Walking alone (well, not really) for a stroll, aside from the sky above that was already different—dominated by a green moon with a mocking face—Al felt as if he were back on Earth, late at night, walking alone beside an artificial lake.
The moonlight was bright and gentle, the sea of stars clear and pure.
Then, not far away, he saw a vaguely familiar figure squatting by the river, doing something unknown.
"Hm?"
Due to the repeated assassination attempts since his birth, Al had developed some PTSD toward such situations, so he decisively ordered a guard to go check while he stayed safely behind.
The trembling figure with hunched shoulders turned its head, revealing a pretty little face with red, swollen eyes from crying, looking pitiful and charming.
Assassin!
The moment Al saw that face, his vigilance skyrocketed. He hadn't forgotten that this rabbit girl had once come to slay the daemon and assassinate him. If it weren't for that rage-tainted beast brother who performed a great service and saved him, the Eternal Champion might have already died—without even touching Plag (the famous Kislev city, nicknamed the Chaos Soul-Bridge, because in normal campaigns the AI's world-ending armies usually couldn't get past it).
The rabbit girl looked like a bunny who had run to the river to cry secretly. Al could guess the reason—probably one of "family died," "friends died," "teacher died," or "tribe gone."
Speaking of which, she seemed quite skilled and very flexible, looking extremely supple.
But Al wasn't going to let lust cloud his judgment and brainlessly run over with a tiger-like aura, tearful tiger eyes, furrowed brows, and a soft sigh, making her bow her head in submission.
After all, the rabbit had tried to assassinate him before. If she suddenly went crazy again to slay Chaos and stabbed him, the beastmen around him might not be able to stop her.
But wait—had she been following the migrating group this whole time? Al hadn't seen her.
He hadn't thought of that. He only felt that since Thar's entrustment until now, she hadn't caused any trouble, so the chance of a sudden assassination attempt seemed low.
But out of caution, Al changed direction with his guards and continued walking upstream.
Behind him, the rabbit girl hugged her legs, her tear-streaked, pear-blossom face pressed against her knees as she watched Al's departing figure from the side.
After thinking for a moment, the rabbit girl wiped her tears, limped along with her perky little butt swaying, and walked back to the camp. Her injuries hadn't fully healed yet, so she couldn't walk fast.
Thar was a good man. Before he died, he entrusted these few hundred people to Al. Although Al had previously harbored dark intentions of seizing power and taking over the base.
But now that Al ruled the tribe, he couldn't betray them—that would also betray himself.
Al looked at the river and wondered if he should make a few fishing rods to cast later. During his education in the human federation, he had chosen fishing as an activity and spent a month by the sea… suddenly his hands itched.
He still remembered there was a type of person called "fishing enthusiasts" whose existence spanned almost the entire history of humanity.
He could cast a line or two when he had time.