"The Greenskins have erected their foul idols upon the ruins of the Great Temple, smearing the royal palace and the city walls with filth. The Southerners have bled themselves dry in this grueling battle; the isolated heroes built walls with their own corpses, their remains filling the Silent Bay. The survivors are driven like slaves and livestock. The entire South has fallen; no force remains to block or delay the savage green tide's march toward the North."
— Eve Catherine, "Scholar" of the Magritta Committee of Seven for National Salvation.
"Let the North face it! The South has had enough!"
— Barton Hall, "Merchant" of the Magritta Committee of Seven for National Salvation.
Al had fabricated much of this—though if things didn't go as he imagined, it likely would have followed such a trajectory. For a city conquered by Greenskins, that was the only "normal" outcome.
He used this to incite morale while simultaneously soothing the restless hearts of those who, by converting and resisting conscription, had semi-publicly rebelled against the Kingdom's central authority to join the tribe.
The Greenskins slaughtered the capital;
The Kingdom is in imminent peril;
The Greenskins are the mortal enemy of the Kingdom;
We join the tribe... and fight alongside them against the Greenskins, which is also to help and save the Kingdom!
The priests of the Four Gods often transmitted this ideology when preaching to the masses. After hearing it several times, Al found it increasingly familiar:
"I am entering the pass to avenge the Great Ming; the empire is being taken from the rebels, not from the Ming!"
"I convert and join the tribe to avenge the Kingdom; it is not treason!"
He then silently face-palmed. After struggling for so long, he had ultimately ended up as a "Northern Rebel Chieftain." If word ever got out, he would be ridiculed among the ranks of those transmigrated into the Old World.
People would see him and laugh: "Al-sin Gioro, you're at it again?" [A pun on the Manchu royal name Aisin-Gioro].
Every time Al thought of this, he felt both aggravated and helpless. While he detested such rhetorical manipulation, it was undeniably effective.
The morale of the (human) soldiers and civilians was visibly surging, and their anxieties regarding rebellion and the Kingdom's retaliation were gradually being suppressed.
As the enemy approached and the situation grew more severe, his connection with the Four Mothers grew faint once again. Although he didn't know how they managed to repeatedly interfere with the mortal realm—given the general silence and low profile of the gods after the receding of Chaos—even to the point where the Reveler Mom could still frequently make cross-planar calls to flirt with her son, Al estimated there were limits to such interference and a price to be paid.
Especially during major events and fluctuations in the mortal realm, this influence tended to weaken. Based on Al's deductions combined with fragments of internet knowledge from decades ago, this could perhaps be summarized by concepts like "Karma," "Providence," or a "Great Tribulation."
Regardless, he felt this was the most plausible explanation.
After the legion assembled, he did not immediately move the entire force. He split off two smaller elite aerial detachments to hide and lie in ambush at two strategic points along the inevitable path of the Greenskins' advance, intending to first test the Greenskin vanguard.
He wanted to gauge the enemy's strength and appropriately demonstrate his own power, showing the Greenskins a tangible enemy and a real challenge to prevent them from adopting a cautious siege strategy like they did at Magritta under the Great Warboss's command.
Greenskins should just WAAAAAGH! and be done with it; life and death are decided by the WAAAAAGH! Being so cautious is simply not "Green" enough!
Although Al believed in the intelligence of Greenskins, he realized their leader—that yet-unseen Great Warboss—was a terrifying individual.
Especially with the Old World's endless cycle of ambushes and the fact that accidents always happened when you least expected them, Al felt a sense of PTSD. He only ever wanted to scheme against others and absolutely did not want to be ambushed himself, so he had made ample preparations in advance.
As long as I prepare enough backup plans, I can always counter-play; accidents won't be able to catch up to me!
The Shamans had channeled a massive amount of ley line energy in advance, engraving a powerful teleportation spell at the location of his main legion.
The mission of the two vanguards was merely to clash with the Greenskins and then use the woodlands to retreat quickly. Al didn't expect a major victory, just as long as they didn't suffer significant losses.
But if the Greenskins got too into the WAAAAAGH!, or if the Beastmen were actually ambushed by the Greenskins in the woods, as long as the enemy didn't surround them instantly with their main force in some unimaginable way, he could activate the ley line teleportation. He could instantly send his fully energized tribal army to the battlefield and crush the Greenskin vanguard along with their reinforcements.
Having broken the Greenskins several times before (Leadership against Greenskins +8), Al was very confident that at an equal scale, the Beastmen held the advantage.
The martial prowess of the Khorngor Vanguards was not something those scrawny Ungors—who were even rejected as collaborators by the Chaos masters—could ever hope to rival!
The Heavily Armored Khorngors were high-intensity benchmarks for Chosen... Champions... at the very least, elite Chaos Warriors.
The rise of the new tribe was in accordance with the divine will of the Four Gods to forge a new order, and it aligned with the hearts of the mortals seeking salvation.
The time, the place, and the people—the advantage is mine!
As long as he broke the Greenskins before him and forced them north to shift the pressure and continue pounding the Estalians, Al's grand plan of swallowing a kingdom as a foundation and uniting all factions to confront the End Times would surely proceed smoothly.
Things are moving in a beautiful direction; I need to work harder too!
Al suppressed the temptation to go back for another round with the Paladin Claudia. He donned his armor, put on his mask, hung his sword at his waist, pushed open the grand tent, and escaped.
The Khorngor Bodyguards raised their halberds and slammed them against the ground.
"Urah!"
As his scions gradually matured, Al gained enough high-quality personnel who could both obey and understand orders, finally allowing him to accelerate the construction and reform of the tribal army.
Although Al's military knowledge was limited to what certain game series provided:
Crossing rivers or charging up mountains? Roll for Ward Save! Move the archers left to hold the ditch!
Corner-camp and shoot the turtle shells; rear-charge the cavalry to break morale!
Aside from that useless "military knowledge" and bits learned from online history classes, he knew that discipline was absolutely a core component of a powerful army.
Allowing powerful beasts to possess discipline, maintain appropriate restraint, and then unleash their madness and savagery upon the enemy at Al's command would create a terrifying army. Al was convinced of this.
So he began putting his scions in command of the military; this was the original purpose for which he created them.
Misha remained Al's deputy, the eldest scion guarding the tribe. As the third-in-command below the Centaur Girl and Al, the "Cow Girl" possessed sufficient ability and prestige to act on Al's behalf.
The third son... third daughter Barbatos was also left behind. Al had this fun-loving, popular scion serve as a brand ambassador, touring the settlements to offer condolences and proclaim authority.
As for the second, Kael'thas, and the fourth, Karen, he kept them by his side—the former as an advisor, the latter as a vanguard general.
Karen was a wolf-girl whose temper was considered the most explosive among the scions. Her fiery personality was no less intense than those original Khorngors who had followed the Centaur Alina.
Al described his fourth daughter as a "massive, super-irritable cat-wolf."
Upon learning that her three older siblings had all received special names from their little father, this arrogant, tsundere, and hot-tempered wolf-girl was infuriated. She led her Black Iron Legion along with her following wolf packs and Centigors out of the territory, sweeping through dozens of Chaos Beastmen tribes. She slaughtered those cousins whose numbers in the central-western Piña Forest had already dwindled to near extinction.
She even skipped the steps of capturing them for conversion; one step was all it took to send them back to Chaos.
The methods used were extremely brutal. While not quite at the level of sadistic torture, such pure slaughter was still terrifying.
But before Al's reprimand could arrive via his messenger,
this aloof and tsundere wolf-girl abandoned her tribe and ran through the forest back to the main tribal camp alone. She crouched in a corner outside Al's palace—which was still a tent at the time—ignoring everyone, cold-faced and baring her teeth as she sulked.
One could say that among the four scions, the wolf-girl had the most childish mind. Barbatos was playful and looked immature, but the wolf-girl was simply hot-tempered. Was it a glitch during her gestation where the Bloodmother's influence vastly outweighed the others, or was she simply born this way?
Her way of expressing emotions was very simple: angry was angry, happy was happy. She didn't dare lose her temper at her father but felt wronged, so she just sat alone and sulked.
She crouched piteously at the doorstep, baring her teeth and growling at the maids. Only the Goat Mom and the Centaur Girl could approach to soothe her.
It wasn't until Al returned and saw this naughty big wolf-girl—her eyes instantly brimming with tears while she struggled to maintain her dignity by resting her head on the Goat Mom's lap—that she finally acted. She didn't proactively cling to Al like a puppy as she used to.
Al questioned her about why she had done such a thing—slaughtering captives and wasting manpower. The wolf-girl didn't answer, biting her lip with tears in her eyes, only saying that if her father wanted to punish her, he should first grant her a name before putting her to death.
Al was helpless against this stubborn, one-track-minded daughter who was prone to extreme emotions.
He could only reprimand her briefly and then comfort her before her psyche shattered, giving her a new name:
"Hera," Hera Karen Al.
After that, he frequently summoned her to his side for real-time education. Hera seemed quite happy about it; if she was a wild wolf frolicking about before, she was now a clingy puppy.
Eventually, she was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by a fed-up Centaur Girl and tossed out, told to find her own fun in the tribe and stop interfering with the "fun" between her and her adopted son.
When Al assembled the army for the expedition, leaving behind the eldest and third daughters, this wolf-girl was the most excited.
She believed that in this true war, she would seize military merits far exceeding those of her siblings and win more of her father's attention and affection.
Although Al didn't really want these long-lived scions—who could serve him in many other ways—to step onto the dangerous frontlines as mere generals, the wolf-girl's stubbornness left him both troubled and helpless. He could only agree to her request for a general's position. Hera would lead an elite force from the Black Iron Legion on the front lines to fight for her little father.