"The sons of Estalia are lions~ The legions of Estalia are a pride~ Now the Goddess sends us to the bat↑tle↓field!~ The lions go to tear the weak sheep to pieces!"
— Estalian Military Song
"Blood for the Bloodmother! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
The Khorngor Legion steps onto the battlefield.
Al rallied his army, even drawing a portion from his four scions to form an even more massive legion.
He left the tribe under the temporary management of his eldest daughter, Misha, and set out on the expedition with his adoptive mother.
Previously, the Expeditionary Force had lost nearly a third of its troops. The number of Beastmen who died in battle or while covering the retreat was close to a thousand—an unprecedentedly heavy casualty since Al's rule began.
To show their severance from the traitors and to avoid hostility, they had to display attitude and action.
The Estalians seeking shelter with the tribe proactively scraped together a force of three thousand men to join this punitive expedition against the traitors as an auxiliary army.
The Beastmen, on the other hand, were blazing with fury!
Al had been constantly instilling positive, uplifting beliefs in them: compatriots, kin, a shared homeland, a common cause. He hoped to mold the Beastmen into a tight, efficient group, avoiding that loose tribal style. Neither the reclusive autonomy under the Shamans of the All-Father nor the frenzied chaos of the Chaos Beastmen was what he wanted.
And all the Beastmen felt an immense rage.
Al lost his subjects, and they lost their comrades-in-arms and kin!
Including the followers of the All-Father, when the sorrowful and hateful news arrived, all Beastmen chose to drop their tasks. They went to the altars, or just stayed in their homes, praying to the Four Mother Goddesses for their fallen compatriots, trusting the almighty Goddesses would use their supreme power to deliver the souls of their believers.
The dead would enter the realm of the god they worshipped.
The Mad Mother of Rage would reward the believers who fought for her with endless trials and supreme glory. They would forever endure as warriors of the Bloodmother, in the form of heroic spirits!
Al naturally knew that this beautiful expectation was, most of the time, merely an "expectation."
It was true that the souls of believers would mostly return to the Four Mother Goddesses. But just looking at the demons and monsters under the command of the four ultimate Big Bosses next door provided a comparison for the situation here.
The All-Knowing Mom hid nothing from him, so Al knew the fate of those souls:
Taking the Khorngors as an example, if their souls weren't obstructed after dying in battle, they would successfully enter Chaos and return to the Bloodmother's realm.
Then, after a long—perhaps an instant, perhaps an eternity—wait, they would crawl out from piles of blades and corpses, float across seas of blood, step onto the shore, and then, as blind and belligerent souls stripped of most of their intellect, wander the red-and-black lands. Along the way, they would fight all the warrior souls they encountered, who were mostly just as blind. Most of the time, these battles ended with one side defeated but not dead. The victor continued searching for their next victory; the loser, after catching their breath, picked up their weapon and continued walking.
Ordinary "Souls of Strife" had to achieve eight consecutive victories before, under the Bloodmother's mighty power, they were granted a new body.
At this point, armor would naturally grow from their bodies, becoming "Blood-Raged Martial Artists," tall warriors resembling humans or beasts depending on their form in life.
Then they would repeat the process above. However, this time, they had to achieve eighty-eight victories and use the trophies taken from their opponents to fill their missing parts. Only then would they advance to become "Warmongers," the basic unit of the Bloodmother's legion.
And only upon reaching this level could they barely be considered to possess independent rationality. Even so, they would basically never again be the mortal believer they once were.
"The mountains collapse! None can stand in her way! Flee for your lives—the Wrath of Thunder and Fire has stepped onto the battlefield!" — "The Chosen of the Four Gods: Book of Kings"
The centaur girl didn't use her long halberd this time. She picked up her great hammer again, leading the Minotaur unit, charging unceasingly toward the city. A monster leading a group of monsters used steel and flesh to forcibly smash the city walls open!
To repeat once more:
Sagegors.
Holders of multiple identities: part-time advisors, scholars, mages, priests, shamans, charlatans, etc.
They were Al's right and left hands, potential troublemakers, and potential future factors of instability.
Their main function now was to act as advisors to the commander, provide magical abilities, and occasionally compose some mystical scriptures to educate (brainwash) the commoners. Incidentally, they also served somewhat as historians, recording what they knew. But don't expect them to be too serious about it; they wrote history to use as source material, later heavily modifying it to be included in the "Warhammer Old World Bible 2.0," which they were probably, maybe, possibly compiling under the authorization of the All-Knowing Mom.
Version 1.0 was filled with endless nonsense, self-contradictory plot holes, and bizarre settings. For example, the severe phallic worship in it made Al extremely uncomfortable after reading it, especially since he himself was the protagonist.
Things like the Everchosen having four arms and three dicks were considered mild. Al even saw a passage that said the Everchosen's "thing" grew incredibly huge, continuously leaking x-fluids, and that the ancient Beastman ancestors survived famine and cured plagues by drinking his x-fluid...
Table flip!
But they were rare auxiliary talents under Al's command, indispensable.
The defending people of Cerebrio were terrified out of their wits. Under the assault of even more Beastmen, they abandoned their posts and fled. How much courage could you expect from traitors who surrendered to the Greenskins just to save their own skins to resist an allied army of Beastmen and Humans?
Especially after the Greenskins had already been defeated.
Their anger was not a bit weaker than the Beastmen's, and it even held a hateful sense of shame within it. The Estalians of the Auxilia, flying the kingdom's banners, charged into the city at the forefront, right behind the monster units.
"The Goddess shall punish you! Cerebrio, city of traitors!"
The stern condemnation from their compatriots caused even more people to give up resistance. The defenders didn't know what to do; the clever ones dropped their weapons and knelt blankly on the ground before the Beastmen's butcher blades fell.
Residents hid in their houses, holding their families and shivering, until passing Beastmen or the Expeditionary Force smashed their doors and windows, sternly ordering everyone out onto the streets, or face the consequences.
Perhaps knowing their crime was the heaviest and inexcusable, of the three leaders of the city council, two chose to commit suicide before being captured. The other intended to flee but was stopped by his peers, caught, tied up tightly, and forced to kneel outside the temple alongside the surrendered.
Cerebrio's City Council—the councils of the Estalians were a mixed bag. Depending on local conditions, they mostly consisted of wealthy prominent figures, nobles, large landowners, or prestigious individuals.
Glared at by their compatriots who were originally supposed to save them but were now here to condemn them, and under the gleaming blades of the Beastmen who looked even more irritable and terrifying, the councilors threw the blame at each other, clearly trying to shift responsibility.
Al rode his Griffon and landed in the city. The Grim Love armor had absorbed the enemies' blood, looking even more resplendent and majestic.
He had personally participated in the battle earlier, using a spear to kill three Greenskins that were intentionally let through.
His first kills.
Perhaps because he was killing an alien race like the Greenskins, Al didn't feel disgusted; instead, his mood became more active.
He looked around. The Loving Mother's blessing clearly told him that most of this group carried guilt and sins.
The pain they created in this world outweighed the happiness; the negative outweighed the positive.
Ever since the Loving Mother wept to Al, he received the blessing to discern whether a person was lying to him, and to "see the positive and negative impacts a person's past and present actions have had on the world."
Offering glory and victory to the Bloodmother;
Cleansing the world's negativity for the Loving Mother;
Avenging his subordinates;
Al performed a simple screening, while also having people interrogate them. He found that the councilors who truly opposed the surrender had either left the city or had been constantly marginalized, persecuted, and then imprisoned. So he gathered all the surrender-advocating traitors.
Then he called the Estalian commanders over.
He gave them two choices:
These people are all traitors. No interrogation or due process is needed. Either you execute them personally, or my tribesmen will execute them for you.
A multiple-choice question.
Al wanted to see what these Estalians would do.
The officers exchanged a few glances, gritted their teeth, and led their soldiers to draw their swords and surround the traitors.
Al nodded in satisfaction.
Then he ordered the entire city's population to prepare for relocation. After another bout of chaos and panic, the vast majority of Cerebrio's residents, carrying bags and luggage, were divided into three groups and gathered outside the city, feeling quite fearful and uneasy.
The corpses of the surrendered councilors were nailed to wooden stakes planted outside the city.
This was exactly where the Expeditionary Force had previously fought a bloody battle, only to be shamefully betrayed.
Al issued another order:
He demanded that the three groups of residents expose the traitors and Greenskin-surrender supporters among the other two groups.
Otherwise, his forces would perform decimation (kill one in ten) on them!
This news had been communicated to the Estalian Auxilia in advance, so it didn't cause a negative backlash. They were also furious at the shame the Cerebrio compatriots had brought upon the Estalians—knowing about but silently consenting to the betrayal occurring was also a sin.
Then, under the threat of decimation, the people gritted their teeth, pointed fingers, and turned on each other. They actually managed to catch quite a few that slipped through the net. Al could naturally judge them one by one, but he didn't have the energy, nor was he willing to simply forgive "the banality of evil."
Let them suspect each other, suffer, taste the bitter fruit they brewed themselves, and feel what it's like to be betrayed.
After being pointed out, confronted, and personally inspected by Al, the traitors and wicked people were lined up separately. Then, Al issued his final command.
"Raze this city to the ground, and erect the corpses of the traitors upon the ruins!"
Thus, under the supervision of the allied tribal forces, the people of Cerebrio had no choice but to pick up tools and begin personally destroying their own homes.
Because previously, people had unhesitatingly left their own homes and families to come here, just to lead them to escape a homeland that was no longer safe!
But they chose to refuse, closed the main gates, and treated their reinforcements like enemies!
"This is what they deserve, and it's still not enough."
Al held grudges sometimes.
He strongly agreed with a school of thought that was very popular in the middle of the century: "Counter verified enemies and acts of sabotage with the most ruthless methods!"
Finally, amidst the tears and terror of the people of Cerebrio, the city their ancestors built and which had stood for so long was personally destroyed and humiliated by their own hands.
Without gunpowder or high-yield magic, manually leveling a city was still a bit difficult.
So Al had the Sagegors cast some destructive spells on Cerebrio as punishment, and then erected the wooden stakes with the corpses.
The routed soldiers of the Expeditionary Force had also regrouped with Al. They also wreaked havoc in the city to vent their resentment.
Subsequently, the refugees of Cerebrio, almost like half-prisoners, were half-escorted, half-guarded all the way back to the forest by the tribe and the Estalian Auxilia. The corpses of those killed in the previous battle, the remains collected by Al after the Greenskins swept through, were also brought back together.
Only after entering the Piña Forest did Al deliver his final verdict on the people of Cerebrio:
Because of your act of betrayal, both the two cities and the tribe agree that you should be punished. But given that the chief instigators have been eliminated, and the rest of the followers lacked the courage to burn their bridges due to cowardice, severe measures will temporarily not be taken:
All rations for the people of Cerebrio will be cut by a quarter. Whenever tasks are assigned, the able-bodied laborers of Cerebrio may not refuse, serving as punitive hard labor;
They must dispatch at least three thousand able-bodied laborers to be driven solely by the tribesmen as compensation. Aside from this, all treatment will be equal to the other refugees;
Among the previously identified traitors and wicked people, those who looked like they truly lacked labor capacity were executed on the spot by Estalian sergeants. The remainder were shackled, condemned to slave labor until death as a capital punishment.
At first, the people of Cerebrio were terrified, thinking the Beastmen were going to bury them alive or eat them in the forest. They only calmed down slightly when the representatives from Veling and Demontrei came out and jointly read the punishment for the Cerebrio people.
Looking at the refugees crying and praying to the Goddess as if they had survived a catastrophe, Al wasn't in a very good mood.
Those Greenskins... what the hell are they?
They actually used military force to coerce humans into cooperating, instead of just WAAAAAGH!ing and turning over every city they bumped into on the road.
It was too strange.
Al's wariness towards the Greenskins was raised several levels in his heart. It was highly possible that the struggle to expand his own power and territory in this "Great WAAAAAGH!" would be much more difficult than he imagined.
He had to integrate these Estalians as quickly as possible!
First, he would start with the army!