"Blood for the Bloodmother!"
"In the name of the Shepherd and the Wild Hunt!"
The minotaurs charged with unstoppable momentum, smashing through the crude outer fences and bursting into the camp that reeked of filth and stench.
The rage-tainted beasts swung their greatswords, hacking through obstacles and chopping off heads. The beastmen infantry formed hedgehog formations with spears and sword-and-shield, leaving the Chaos beastmen nowhere to bite as they were forced to scatter in all directions.
The Chaos beastmen's resistance didn't last long—especially after the roaring four-armed Beastlord emerged from the cave to launch a counterattack, only to be swiftly beheaded by the minotaur that had received the final surge of the Winds of Chaos and the Bloodmother's blessing.
On the perimeter, warriors who had been lying in ambush used bows to drive back any Chaos kin trying to flee into the forest. The beastmen following close behind used nets and lassos to firmly capture them.
Notably, one agile, graceful rabbit girl performed outstandingly in this battle. Using hooks and nets, she single-handedly captured seven or eight Chaos beastmen.
Al rode on the centaur girl's back, calmly watching from the outskirts as this small Chaos beastman settlement was wiped out. Anything useful was looted, while the remains and filth were left in place, waiting to be burned and purified.
How many was this now?
Al thought about it. He had already reached double digits long ago. If he hadn't personally entered this forest, he would never have known such a bizarre fact: even after Chaos receded and the beastmen fractured, so many Chaos beastmen still existed and were scattered throughout the primitive forests.
Because it was difficult for Bray-Shamans or powerful Beastlords to appear, these Chaos beastmen could no longer form the massive warbands of the past that spread destruction everywhere. Instead, they had split into many small and medium-sized tribes, distributed across every corner of the Pina Forest and the Irrana Mountains.
Yet the Southern Kingdoms turned a blind eye to this shadowy threat right on their doorstep, blocked only by dense woodland.
Without the interference of the New Four Gods and Al, it was foreseeable that during the second End Times, when Bray-Shamans were born and powerful Beastlords rose and returned, the tidal wave of hoofed creatures surging from the forests would once again inflict terrible pain upon civilization—just like the previous End Times.
"Good thing I'm here."
Al both mocked and praised himself.
He belonged to the Chaos faction that leaned toward Order. Though from Order's perspective, it was like an inappropriate metaphor:
One was Dorgon who wanted to shave heads and change clothing, the other was Hong Taiji who was willing to adopt Han laws.
Two piles of shit—only one smelled slightly less bad.
If there was a choice, of course it would be best to olive both.
If there wasn't…
In the past few days, the scattered Chaos beastmen they had captured numbered nearly a thousand. Those directly killed, crippled, or too heavily corrupted with no hope of reformation were also dealt with immediately. The number was roughly three times that.
The smallest Chaos beastman tribes had only five or six members. Slightly larger ones had a dozen or a few dozen. Tribes of a hundred were very rare.
In these past few days, they had only discovered two. One was the Chaos beastman tribe that had first approached Al's settlement.
"That's enough for today. Mark the location."
Two squads totaling thirty-eight rage-tainted beasts guarded nearly a hundred Chaos beastmen on the left and right.
These Al's vanguard forces, carrying a thick Chaos aura, had a natural hierarchical suppression over the corrupted Chaos beastmen. When they smelled the rage-tainted beasts' scent, they felt fear and therefore obeyed, not daring to cause trouble easily.
The group returned fully loaded, escorting the captives back to camp.
By now the tribe was no longer the crude, tiny camp from before. Thanks to Al's planning, many areas had even surpassed the Revelers tribe at its peak.
In the woodland, a fairly large palisade settlement stood on the plain beside the river.
It had outer walls (made of wood, defense ↑), paved roads (leveled and rolled with stone rollers, mobility ↑), neatly arranged houses (housing ↑, Al's strategy-player OCD), an assembly ground (a large open area, public order +5), shrines (expanded small circular platforms, with the Stone of Gestation placed on top), and a market (a place where beastmen spontaneously gathered to trade small items, income +100).
Outside the palisade, on the opposite bank of the river, a large stretch of land had been cleared for farmland. They planted some strange crops Al didn't recognize. They had also captured some wild beasts suitable for taming, simply fenced them in and began training them (food production, development +20).
There were no truly gentle species in the Pina Forest. Even if there were, they were limited to the outer edges.
Upon returning to the tribe, the first thing they saw was the troll enclosure that had been moved downstream. After the bloody and filthy baptism, the beastmen's tolerance had improved quite a bit, but they still found the river trolls' stench disgusting.
The river troll chieftain still looked quite clever. It was lying on the wet soil outside the fence, staring blankly. When it saw Al's group return, it raised its neck and let out a strange cry toward Al, as if trying to please him.
A somewhat silly big dog.
Al waved his hand and had someone throw over a Chaos beastman corpse. The river troll grabbed it in front of itself and lay on the ground, devouring it with gusto.
A few river trolls were clearly hungry. Sensitive to the scent of fresh meat, they gathered by the fence, looking eager to get out. They were driven back by the surrounding beastmen guards using torches.
These idiots.
Al recalled how he had previously tried taking the trolls onto the battlefield to encircle and annihilate Chaos beastmen. The effect had actually been decent. After charging, with the support of other units, they could perform roughly on par with minotaurs. The problem was their brains were too stupid.
Al's goal was to capture live prisoners, but these guys usually just smashed, sent flying, or smashed to pieces and then picked up to eat.
After charging, they couldn't accept orders at all. Even when Al desperately sent mental commands to retreat, they would only slowly walk back after smashing everything. If they encountered enemy attacks or harassment along the way, they would charge out again without regard, only retreating or fleeing when they felt the situation was wrong or they were at a disadvantage.
The river troll chieftain was the same. On the battlefield, it could only temporarily understand simple commands like advance, retreat, and wait for the enemy. However, its behavior of trying to please Al was becoming more frequent and smoother.
Al planned to give it a name—River Lushan.
It didn't feel very auspicious…
So let's call it River Shuhan instead!
Thinking about all sorts of strange things along the way, he walked toward the palisade.
As they approached the tribe, the population was visibly denser and larger than before.
Al's tribe was expanding outward in all directions with the palisade as the center.
The surrounding woodland was first cleared for lumber and to open up the field of vision to prevent ambushes.
As for the consequences?
Al said: The greenskins and forest spirits ran off to Athel Loren. Am I supposed to be afraid of them? Cut them down!
It was also because the beastmen's previous way of life had been too primitive. When Chaos was strong, that could be understood—everything was chaotic and Chaos blessings would take care of it. But now that divine power had receded, continuing primitive life was no longer acceptable.
Even if they didn't fully integrate into human society like most Shepherd believers, they should at least find a better place to settle and adopt farming.
Staying tangled with a bunch of Chaos beastmen, half-connected, would eventually lead to the Empire's iron fist smashing them all together.
Al felt that if they had split off earlier and moved the settlement farther away, they wouldn't have encountered these problems.
The male minotaurs were mostly in Al's army. The female minotaurs still maintained their farming habits. Together with the much smaller beastmen, the minotaurs handled clearing land while the beastmen handled sowing and irrigation.
Rabbitmen and goatmen were the second and third largest groups in the tribe. The former, except for a few outstanding individuals, had difficulty becoming good warriors. Due to their size and strength, even becoming warriors was hard. However, they bred quickly and were qualified as logistical personnel.
Goatmen were between traditional beastmen and rabbitmen. Their main talents were in support and logistics. Female goatmen produced milk, which was a major food source for the tribe.
Goat Mom was one of the few tall goatmen. Because of that, she wasn't favored by goatmen who preferred petite partners and had remained single before Al arrived.
He also only learned after that day that the centaur girl and Goat Mom had known each other before. Alina had once drunk Goat Mom's mother's milk, and the two had a good relationship. Otherwise Alina wouldn't have chosen her as Al's reward.
There were also some smaller groups, such as boar-transformed, fox-transformed, and dog-transformed beastmen. However, their numbers were too few—basically just one to a few families. Al didn't even plan to recruit soldiers from some "rare species" to avoid the risk of lineage extinction if the males died.
Regardless, the main group of beastmen was still the horned ones. Especially after Al kept capturing Chaos beastmen to bolster the population, Al's tribe now numbered close to three thousand. Two-thirds were horned beastmen, and more than half were either fully converted or still in the process of conversion from Chaos beastman captives.
The New Four Gods didn't disappoint Al for long. On the night they wiped out the first Chaos tribe, among the first batch of Chaos beastmen who had been bound under the altar for three days, signs of assimilation appeared:
One Chaos beastman gradually calmed down. Its eyes were no longer bloodthirsty and frenzied like before. After Al ordered it released, this Chaos beastman immediately knelt before the Bloodmother's shrine, then turned toward Al to show submission.
After a day of observation, its mutations began to recede. Its appearance gradually shifted toward something slightly resembling a rage-tainted beast. It would probably take more than a week.
Through Al's tests, if they were sent into battle and shouted "Blood for the Bloodmother" while fighting, the conversion process would be even faster.
Converting Chaos beastmen was feasible!
The surrounding Chaos beastman tribes were out of luck. They were constantly encircled and annihilated by Al and the centaur girl, then absorbed and brought before the Four Gods' shrines for purification and conversion.
Al also discovered a bloodier but faster method: lock the Chaos beastmen in cages with the Bloodmother's shrine placed outside, let them kill each other, and the few survivors would convert toward rage-tainted beasts even faster and stronger.
Every time he returned from a campaign, he would have people offer sacrifices to the Four Gods. But so far, only the Bloodmother seemed to have the deepest influence and blessings on the tribe. Basically, after every battle, one or two fully converted rage-tainted beasts would appear among the Bloodmother-worshipping beastmen.
These guys were somewhat more rational than the rage-tainted beasts among their Chaos kin—warlike but not bloodthirsty, easily angered but not insane. They were the troops Al had always used as his main force and direct lineage. Currently, they had gathered eighty-eight in scattered numbers.
Aside from their intelligence still not being very high, they were still much better than ordinary beastmen.
If he could have eight thousand-strong rage-tainted beast legions, Al felt he could even leave the forest and roam freely—as long as he didn't run into Athel Loren's sky-fleets or mage armies.
Even with just two thousand rage-tainted beasts, Al was confident he could make an imperial army like the one at the valley encirclement never return.
Goat Mom spotted him from afar while waiting at the entrance. When she saw Al riding on the mare's back, she proactively came forward. She opened her arms beside Alina and raised her hands.
Al skillfully jumped down, was caught in Goat Mom's embrace, then gently placed on the ground. She took his hand and led him inside.
Alina simply ordered the legion to wait at the assembly ground and followed as well.
The big one and the small one followed Goat Mom into the tent. First she handed water to the centaur girl, then fed milk to Al.
It felt… like being raised by Goat Mom.
Al looked at the mare, who had no sense of being a "mother" at all. Instead, she was like a big child being cared for by Goat Mom, lying very comfortably on her lap with a gurgling sound in her throat.
Already corrupted in Goat Mom's embrace…
Al sighed inwardly.
Damn it, the grand plan for the End Times isn't complete yet. I can't degenerate like this!
After drinking his fill, Al burped, stood up from the goat girl's arms, and wiped his mouth.
"I'm going to the assembly ground."
In the tribe right now, the green dots—including Shepherd believers, Four Gods beastmen, and trolls—made up roughly half the total. The rest were yellow and red, especially the Chaos beastmen, who were basically only in red hostile or green subordinate states. Once they began accepting the New Four Gods' rule, they would quickly turn green. There was no backsliding.
However, this was already a rather dangerous number. Although the rage-tainted beasts had a natural advantage over Chaos beastmen, and Al had always maintained strict control and suppression so no incidents had occurred, the dangers in the forest weren't limited to Chaos beastmen.
Moreover, the Chaos beastmen they had encountered so far were all scattered small tribes. Al's forces crushing them was strong against weak and many against few—total domination. But if they encountered a force of similar strength to his own, those nearly fifteen hundred unconverted Chaos beastmen would be a terrifying hidden danger—especially if they gathered together.
"From now on, stop capturing population for the time being. Focus mainly on scouting and mapping."
Al cut his hand, frowned, and let the blood drip onto the Stone of Gestation. The Chaos beastmen locked in the assembly ground clearly sensed the pure aura contained in the Chosen's blood and became somewhat restless.
Looking at the dense mass of the beast herd, Al felt it was time to stop expanding.
"The current population is temporarily enough. If we add more, the ratio will become unbalanced. Let's fully convert these guys first before continuing."
"Also, we need to find ways to improve the tribe's craftsmanship and technological level."
Al thought about the next stage of development planning.
After bleeding, he treated the wound. It would heal quickly.
He walked toward the tent. He had been away from Goat Mom's lap pillow for eighteen minutes.
He missed it.