"Waaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!"
On the open plain, a band of over a hundred pig-riding greenskin brutes let out earth-shaking war roars and spurred their mounts forward in a charge.
The officer gripped the hilt of the blade at his waist with one hand and raised a short-barreled handgun with the other, aiming toward the greenskins.
"Form spears into a forest!"
The well-trained infantry formed a crescent-shaped spear phalanx in tight, orderly rhythm to the drums. The shooters took aim through the gaps, unleashing a swift, fierce volley of fire to weaken the enemy before they closed in.
"Waaaaagh!" A greenskin shaman riding a war boar, swinging a bone club and wearing a stone mask, threw its head back and howled. Two savage green beams of light from the wilds coalesced on its staff and shot out.
Gork's Gaze!
The army's war priest hurriedly called upon the Goddess's power. "Myrmidia's Shield!" A faint barrier appeared on the path the green light had to take, but it was useless. The barrier proved as fragile as it looked and was easily shattered by the shaman's spell, dissolving into scattered fragments that vanished.
Gork's Gaze slammed into the phalanx, causing an explosion that killed several infantrymen and two handgunmen.
"No, Goddess!"
The priest fell to the ground in terror. Holy relics scattered everywhere. He stared at the sky in horror, unable to understand why the Goddess's protection had suddenly grown so weak.
"Form spears into a forest!" The officer had no time to deal with the despairing priest. Gritting his teeth, he drew his curved blade and pointed forward.
The infantrymen's hands gripping the long spears tightened until their knuckles turned white.
"Ready~!"
The leading greenskins had already charged to within one hundred and fifty paces. Anyone with good eyesight could clearly see their tusks and the tattoos on their skin.
"Fire!"
The officer pulled the trigger first.
"Bang!"
After a rank of handguns fired, more than a dozen of the leading greenskins tumbled from their mounts. Most managed to climb back up and continue their Waaagh.
"Ready~!"
Sweat poured from the officer's palm around the curved blade, but with the great enemy before them, he could not let the soldiers sense their commander's tension and panic.
"Fire!"
"Waaaaaaaaaagh!!!"
The leading brute, its body blooming with several bloody flowers, still refused to fall. Its warlust and madness, amplified to the extreme by the Waaagh field, drove it to charge straight into the spear phalanx with both rider and boar.
Clearly it was no Ironhide.
The moment it made contact, it impaled its own greenskin life on the spears.
Its massive head still wore the savage, ferocious expression from the final moment before death. Fortunately, the first rank of spearmen in the phalanx were all veteran soldiers who had survived multiple battles. Their strength and courage were the finest and they would not be easily frightened.
But the problem was that such warriors were too few, while the greenskins were too many.
More pig-riding brutes chose the same suicidal head-on charge into the Estalian front. The greenskin shaman also timely released an "Ruthless and Unjust" amplification spell, allowing the greenskins to ignore the effects of fatigue and injury and fight even more recklessly.
"Hold! Hold the line!"
The officer swung his curved blade and chopped off the head of a greenskin whose entire body had been pierced by spears yet was still roaring madly. He then fired a shot that exploded the head of another brute. Sweat drenched his back, but he still forced himself to stand on the front line and raise his courage.
"Myrmidia's Spear!" The war priest also shook off his doubt in the faith. Gritting his teeth, he released the spell with effort. The tips of the soldiers' spears were covered in a faint golden glow. Though weak, it increased their sharpness and piercing power.
This small blessing barely stabilized a little morale. The savage greenskins were still one step away from breaking the Estalian line. It seemed this skirmish was about to end in victory for the human side.
(Humans, human-things, die! Die!)
A cloud of ominous green energy also gathered above the phalanx. Green lightning crackled all around. Soon a thick dimensional lightning bolt was fully charged and mercilessly struck the exact center of the Estalian formation.
In an instant, over a dozen tightly formed infantrymen and handgunmen were bombed by the lightning. Some died, some were crippled. The commander's eyes nearly burst from their sockets. He was about to order the reserves to plug the gap when the greenskins seized the opening and poured into the wide-open position!
Another volley of dark arrows shot from the shadows struck the Estalians in the back.
These arrows, which used warpstone technology and possessed extreme penetration, easily pierced through leather and iron armor. Over a dozen unprepared handgunmen and infantrymen fell to the dark arrows.
By the time the officer realized something had gone wrong in the rear, it was already too late. He turned around in disbelief, looking at the chaotic rear ranks, then twisted his head back to see the phalanx already showing signs of collapse.
In despair he swung his curved blade and charged forward, chopping off the head of the first greenskin that met him. But he was violently rammed aside by the war boar beneath it. His body tumbled and was trampled in the chest by another charging war boar that galloped right over him.
The officer's chest immediately caved in. He spat out a mouthful of bloody foam and used his last strength to raise his left hand, aiming at the departing greenskin and pulling the trigger.
"Bang!"
This was the final human handgun shot of the battle. The greenskin's head exploded in a spray of blood and fell from its mount.
The officer's hand also dropped.
On the other side of the battlefield, wolf-rats raced alongside the cavalry, biting and dragging the rangers from their horses. Then they swarmed over them, gnawing through armor and tearing into flesh.
Under the enhancement of the Skaven Skitterleap spell, the rangers could not shake off the wolf-rats that clung to them like ticks. One after another they were pulled to the ground. Some were even leaped onto while still mounted, their throats and bellies ripped open by claws and teeth.
Soon this force, which had been spontaneously gathered and hired by the officer from the southwest of Magritta near the port of Pamorz and was heading to Magritta for rescue, was completely wiped out on the mid-western plains.
From the unnamed Skaven Clan Pestilens, many active little things had been secretly scattered along the Eberan Road connecting Magritta to the west.
Using Skaven sorcery, they had turned the road into a pitted, cratered mess. There were also occasional traps carrying curses and plague. The Goddess had fallen into a state of disconnection. The capital was surrounded. War leaders and local priests could not dispel the Skaven spells.
Most people could only choose to avoid the plague-filled road and detour through the wilderness toward Magritta, only to suffer continuous attacks from greenskins and Skaven. Losses were heavy. Out of ten companies, barely two reached Magritta. Even those that arrived were blocked by what seemed like an endless green tide.
At this moment, outside the walls of Magritta, the pirate and greenskin fleets continued to pour cannonballs, explosives, and various junk parts cobbled together into something that barely looked round but could still be stuffed into gun barrels, fired, and exploded — greenskin junk cannons. The risk of them exploding depended on the gunner and the Waaagh power of the surrounding greenskins, but in the advantage phase they became extremely fierce firepower.
The third week of Magritta's siege.
The greenskin horde still had not launched a large-scale assault on the city. Aside from continuous bombardment to damage the defenses and morale, the massive army remained camped outside, constantly splitting off detachments and recalling them, leaving the isolated people of Magritta unable to figure out the situation.
If this had been humans or any other force, it might still have been understandable, but this was greenskins!
Greenskins whose brains were filled with Waaagh and who charged into Waaaaagh!
Something was very wrong.
Extremely wrong!
The people of Magritta could only keep guessing the enemy's intentions and work hard to repair and reinforce the city defenses under the suppression of cannon fire.
Inside the greenskin warboss's tent, the greenskin warlords, shamans, and even their allies were thinking the same thing.
"Big, big warboss, human-things, die die!"
"Today, today attack the city. Rat-rats tomorrow, tomorrow send troops!"
The hooded assassin ratmen were trying hard to persuade the greenskin warboss, the Waaagh Boss, the biggest, strongest, greenest, and most cunning in the southern Badlands:
Gorkmork the Flying Dragon.
This greenskin warboss was said to have gained wisdom different from its ordinary kin due to mysterious experiences in its early years. It was almost the only case of a greenskin who rose to the position of warboss without particularly famous personal combat feats, relying almost entirely on its image as a commander and leader.
Its tribe rose very quickly. Along the way, Gorkmork was almost always undefeated against every enemy it encountered. If it ever suffered a loss, there was no doubt — Gorkmork had done it on purpose. It was luring its enemies.
A subsequent ambush or a critical battle defeat would await the enemy, announcing their failure.
Thus its "Greenbrain" tribe continued to grow and expand. It unified the southwest of the Bleak Wastes, crushed the beastmen, and incorporated willing tribes into its ranks — something very rare among greenskin tribes, which usually only had two ways of dealing with enemies: kill them or enslave them and then kill them.
It also traded with the free city of Sartosa, selling loot and spoils to the so-called "free citizen" pirates in exchange for their weapons and support, jointly striking at Tilean and Estalian ships to form a continuous industrial chain.
Then, using the advantage of equipment and technology, combined with Gorkmork the Flying Dragon's brain — which was exceptionally flexible and clever even among human commanders — it continued to conquer and absorb other greenskin tribes, constantly expanding the Greenbrain tribe.
Later, while Gorkmork sat in the great chieftain's tent in the City of Golden Oaths pondering the future of greenskins and considering its next step, an emissary from the unnamed northern ratmen of Lustria entered its great tent.
Gorkmork had already been very successful as an ordinary greenskin warboss. It was the first greenskin warboss to reach this stage not by relying on personal martial prowess but on strategy. Strictly speaking, calling it a king or a prophet would not be wrong.
But it still needed to go one step further and complete the great deed of carving its legend into the greenskin genes so that greenskins as far as Naggaroth (the Dark Elves) and east to the mud friends of Cathay would all know its name.
It was decided!
With the help of the little rat-things and the pirates, it would become the second greenskin warboss after Big Belly King Grot to launch a cross-sea Waaaaagh!
To sweep and conquer the kingdoms of the Southerners!
Gorkmork and the ratmen together used heavy gold and promises to win over pirate allies and gain their full support. It also raised the Waaaaagh banner toward the north, attracting scattered greenskins from everywhere to join, while avoiding alerting the Southerners.
Before the greenskin fleet set sail, the pirate armada held a massive sacrificial ritual to Mannann. The sea god, whose nature was as changeable as the ocean itself, accepted the offerings and guaranteed the fleet calm seas all the way.
The Skaven had infiltrated every corner of Estalia and Tilea long ago, carrying out assassinations, disruptions, poisonings, and arsons of all kinds to sabotage and weaken Estalia's institutions and strength.
Gorkmork the Flying Dragon gathered all the shamans under its command and combined them with the stealthy sorcery of the Eshin Clan among the ratmen, releasing a super-huge super-Waaaaagh concealment spell. In this way, despite the strong suggestions from the ratmen, it still insisted on bypassing the closer Tilean Kingdom and launching a hidden, complete, unexpected, and fully armed sneak attack on the much larger and more distant Estalians.
The Southerners had been kept completely in the dark from the preparation stage. Even the far-seeing War Goddess had fallen into a deathly silence, until the greenskin horde appeared on the coastline.
No one could know what Gorkmork was thinking. Anyone who tried or thought they had guessed its next plan would usually lose very badly.
Many people who knew the deeds of this greenskin warboss believed that beneath that huge green body there must be hidden the mind of a cunning Skaven warlord.
It was cunning and cold, but not cruel. It loved achievements without arrogance. It was the rarest of rarities among greenskins — a true oddity.