The Skull Cannon continuously spat out scorching waves of heat, the weeds on the ground already charred to cinders.
This battlefield engine of slaughter, seemingly possessed of its own malevolent will, was a weapon forged of the Bloodmother's divine power.
The ear-piercing, bone-chilling screech of its gears—sounding like human limbs being forcibly stuffed into a massive bestial skull to be mangled and pulverized—roared without pause.
Violent magic condensed within the barrel, which had undergone a metamorphosis into a substance far beyond mortal matter.
It spat forth a torrent of destruction, blooming flowers of blood, mangled flesh, and splashing bone fragments amidst the Greenskin horde.
Then, even more Greenskins surged forward to fill the gap.
They trampled over the remains of the "Good Boyz" who, just moments ago, had been charging with ferocious momentum, continuing their advance over the only traces of their existence left in this world.
Al sat upon the back of his Griffon, positioned at the very center of the Khorngor Legion's array.
Fully armored, his gaze cold and stern, he looked down upon the battlefield.
This time, the strength displayed by the Greenskins was significantly more formidable than those he had defeated in Veling, Magus, and Cerebrio.
More importantly, they demonstrated a level of "discipline" superior to that of average Greenskins.
To Al, this was very bad news.
Fifty thousand savage beasts with nothing but brute strength were one thing, but fifty thousand fearless Spartan warriors howling in a battle frenzy were a threat on a completely different level.
Though Greenskin discipline would likely never reach such heights, even a slight improvement meant the difficulty and cost of defeating them skyrocketed.
Despite having already inflicted casualties nearly double their own numbers, fresh Greenskin reinforcements continued to pour in without end.
After a brief moment of rallying and forming ranks, they launched their assault.
Their numbers were so vast and their lust for battle so intense that Al even suffered the fleeting illusion that the enemy had dragged every single Greenskin in Estalia to this spot.
Al felt a flicker of the urge to retreat, yet he hesitated, sensing that many of the smaller skirmishes scattered across the vast, dense woodlands had not yet concluded.
In truth, up to this point in the battle, the Khorngor army held a total advantage in the "exchange ratio"—the metric Al valued most in military affairs.
The valley terrain featured a sloping incline, narrow at the entrance and wide within, with high ground in the center.
Al had established his defenses here, sending out outriders to draw the Greenskins' attention and lure them into the valley.
This forced them to attack from the low, narrow entrance against his high, wide position.
Furthermore, of the three thousand Khorngors Al brought, the Heavily Armored Khorngors were nearly all deployed.
They held the line with halberds while striking with greatswords and shields.
With the Winds of Magic blowing strong, the chanting and prayers within the Shaman units never ceased.
They ensured a continuous cycle of buffs for their own side and debuffs or damaging spells against the Greenskins.
Spells in reality didn't function quite like in games, where a single blast of the Wind of Ghyran or a Life Magic "Awakening of the Wood" could instantly wipe out a horde.
Powerhouses capable of unleashing magic of that scale and potency were, at least for now, not among Al's subordinates.
He himself didn't count.
For instance, within the spells of the Wind of Aqshy, the Fire Arrows, Burning Barrages, and Ash Blasts generally only caused casualties in the single digits per cast.
In Al's view, without spells powerful enough to shatter worlds or flip the tide of battle, the Shamans' best use was boosting morale on a spiritual level.
Though even that role had been largely superseded by the boy's personal presence on the field.
Beyond that, their utility lay in large-area buff and debuff magic affecting both friend and foe.
His Khorngor Legion was the ultimate weapon of slaughter in this forest.
The role of his not-yet-powerful spellcasters was to provide maintenance and support for these living weapons.
They ensured the warriors remained sharp when killing and provided them with layers of self-protection.
Blood—boiling blood.
The blood of friend and foe alike pooled together, even manifesting the bizarre phenomenon of a reverse flow, streaming toward the ground where Al stood.
The Blood River Blessing incited the Khorngors; they were bursting with energy, immune to fatigue, their morale soaring.
Their lust for battle was eternally high; they could fight until the end of time, until the last corpse of either side hit the dirt.
But Al no longer wished to continue this fight.
This was not the site he had chosen for the decisive battle; even his personal presence to oversee the combat was a temporary decision.
The goal of blunting the enemy's vanguard had been achieved, and the losses on both sides were within satisfactory limits.
Al intended to retreat.
Having seized dominance of the skies—though aerial units suffered limited vision in forest terrain like Piña—
he also had a massive network of wolf packs and Beastman scouts on the ground to scout and clear the fog of war.
Thanks to the Beastmen's natural aptitude for scouting and Al's All-Knowing Blessing, he had turned this war into a "cheating" match where he had no fog of war.
Therefore, Al easily discovered a large Greenskin force, roughly six to seven thousand strong, moving toward his north outside the valley.
They were clearly looking for the canyon's exit to cut off his line of retreat.
However, Al naturally wouldn't be like the man he was cosplaying—Chancellor Cao Cao of Wei—who laughed heartily while passing a mountain pass on his retreat:
"I laugh at the Greenskins' lack of wit and the Warlord's lack of strategy! Had they placed an ambush here to cut my retreat, my life would be forfeit!"
Only to have a Greenskin brute leap out shouting "WAAAAAGH!" leading an ambush, yelling, "I've been waiting for you per the Warlord's orders!"
Al wouldn't allow that.
So, in addition to the three thousand men blocking the entrance, he had a rear guard of three thousand—half Beastmen, half mortals—lying in ambush near the exit as a reception force.
If push came to shove, Al would have to expose the secret of the ley line teleportation; preserving his precious tribal strength was the primary goal.
However, doing so would add variables to the decisive battle.
The Greenskin Warlord, who was far too clever for an Orc, might snap to his senses and switch to a cautious, methodical strategy.
In the time it took him to think, the Greenskins left behind another hundred corpses.
In contrast, the combined number of fallen or heavily wounded Khorngors was only in the single digits.
After healing—and even the Shamans joining forces to unleash a version of the "Jade Casket" modified by the Loving Mother's power—they could resurrect the recently deceased.
Compared to the original Jade Casket, which was classified as a "Necromancy" spell to manipulate corpses,
the Loving Mother's version not only preserved the memories of the resurrected but also didn't require constant maintenance by the Wind of Ghyran.
It was equivalent to a true resurrection.
The price was that the resurrected could never again speak to another.
Otherwise, they would leak the secret of their return to life, leading to the God of Death discovering and hating them, potentially drawing the attention of the Knights of Morr or his priesthood.
The enemy had no truly elite forces present.
If the enemy commander had sent in his personal guard—powerful, disciplined Black Orcs with much better equipment—
Al would have to consider letting ordinary soldiers take the brunt of the attrition first.
But he had no desire to trade his units for ordinary Greenskins.
He directly pushed his elite Heavily Armored Khorngors—four warbands—to the front.
Given the valley's terrain, not even two eighty-eight-man warbands could stand side-by-side.
To these fearless but average Greenskins, the Heavily Armored Khorngors were high-intensity slaughter machines: efficient, precise, and low-attrition.
Al signaled his mount, the Griffon girl. She was the first aerial beast he had tamed and had been assimilated and tainted by the boy's blessings over time.
She had grown even more majestic and powerful, the undisputed queen among aerial war-beasts.
He conveyed his command, and she flapped her wings, soaring into the sky.
Her eldest daughter—the second Griffon Al had ridden—walked over and stood behind the boy, taking her mother's place.
The Griffon streaked through the air, letting out a piercing shriek to relay the master's orders to all sides.
Simultaneously, the scouts lurking or running through the woodlands and the flying monsters who understood the signal relayed the commands through their own means.
Twenty minutes later, the Greenskin assault weakened.
It seemed the Greenskin commander intended to find another way to overcome them.
Al watched with satisfaction as the All-Knowing display showed the scattered clusters of green dots beginning to retreat in an orderly fashion, disengaging from the enemy.
"It's time to end this."
The boy gave the order to the Sagegor advisors standing by.
They called out in unison and stepped forward, beginning their joint preparation.
A massive spell was brewing.
It would briefly split the terrain in the middle of the valley, buying time for Al's retreat.
Once the overactive magical winds subsided, other forces would merge back in, restoring the terrain that had been altered and twisted.
Al removed his mask and looked toward the entrance outside the valley.
A dark mass of Greenskin guards, whose ferocious and elite aura could be felt even from a distance, was advancing.
They followed a Big 'Un whose physique rivaled that of a Troll, his gaze colder and more violent than a typical Greenskin.
He seemed ready to step onto the battlefield.
"Not today!"
Al laughed heartily. He pulled over several Shamans and asked if there was a way to use a long-range spell to take out that Greenskin Big 'Un, who clearly looked like a heavyweight enemy figure.
The Shamans checked the distance and said it was still too far.
Furthermore, the WAAAAAGH! field around the enemy commander was at its strongest; it would be hard to decapitate him through magical means.
That kind of job was best left to Al's adoptive mother, the Centaur Alina, or the Minotaur Commander Alestar.