During the time Al spent at the fortress that was about to become the front line—destined to be filled with the remains of Greenskin and tribal warriors—he encountered an unexpected event.
A group of Estalian warriors from the tribe, acting with what could be described as rough agitation, brought a group of human prisoners of war.
They escorted them outside the temporary command post of the fortress. A massive crowd followed, their shouting as loud as a boiling cauldron.
Al was currently pressing his hand on his fourth daughter's head, giving her all sorts of instructions.
The big wolf-girl crouched before her little father, her height barely a head shorter than his.
Her wolf tail was upright, wagging rapidly behind her; she was clearly in a very good mood.
The interaction between father and daughter was interrupted by the noise outside.
Hera's eyes instantly narrowed, her lips curling back to reveal a mouth full of exceptionally developed, sharp fangs.
Her dissatisfaction was written all over her face.
She truly looked like a large carnivorous predator.
The influence of the wolf—or one could say, the dog—on Hera was so thick that Al sometimes wondered if he had run out of blood when it came to this fourth child's creation.
As a result, the wolf inheritance occupied a larger proportion.
However, the boy still took the wolf-girl's hand. He had to deal with the matter at hand first.
Al walked out of the tent and scanned the area. The bodyguards slammed their weapons into the ground with a rhythmic thud.
The chaotic atmosphere in the field instantly fell into a pin-drop silence.
"What's going on?"
Al's gaze turned toward the group of human prisoners. Many bore wounds and looked like they had just come off the battlefield.
Two Estalian commanders stepped out from the ranks and bowed to Al from a distance.
Their expressions were a mix of inexplicable grief and rage. They pointed at the prisoners and said:
"Your Highness!"
"These prisoners are from the army of Magritta!"
Among the prisoners, a few scattered voices protested: "We're mercenaries..." "We're from Sartosa..."
Their voices were low and lacked conviction, as if they were trying to deceive themselves.
Al suddenly understood.
Well, I'll be. They've even formed a puppet army.
The Greenskin Warlord is even more terrifying than I imagined...
Obviously, such an explanation could neither fool Al nor the enraged Estalians.
They had searched the prisoners and found many items, which they now brought forward or held up to show the crowd.
"This is a dog tag from the Magritta Outrider Company! It even has a name carved on it! Look here, it says: 'Ford Khan Harold / 125th Outrider Centurion / Magritta'!"
"And there are ones from the Tercio! The Tercio!" Someone shouted, holding up a string of identification tags taken from the prisoners.
"This equipment is also standard issue! The musket grips have the military factory serial numbers! They were forged just last month!"
The captured supplies were piled together, and under guard supervision, people were allowed only to view them from nearby, not take them.
"Ordnance... dog tags! The accents—they are all Magrittans! They are even Royal Army subordinates of Magritta!"
The Estalian soldiers shouted in fury: "Cowards! Traitors!"
"They've defected to the Greenskins! They're helping the enemy attack us!"
The lead officer walked to the front of Al's bodyguards and knelt on one knee before the boy standing behind these majestic guards.
Using his remaining intact and free left hand, he pointed to his bandaged right arm.
In a voice heavy with anger and sorrow, he said: "Your Highness! I fight for you, for the Four Mother Goddesses, and for my land and compatriots. But the wound I suffered today was caused by a bullet forged by my own people!"
"Hang these traitors! Hang them all!"
"Tell the Kingdom the news! Let every Estalian warrior know that Magritta produced such a pack of cowards!"
The scene was one of total public indignation.
If it were just a group of people enslaved and driven by Greenskins, the situation would never have reached this point.
But these people weren't like the human laborers enslaved by Greenskins!
They had weapons! From their appearance, they didn't look like they had their rations cut or were starving.
On the contrary, to a man, they were physically more robust than this group of Mortal Auxilia recruited from refugees and old garrisons.
And on the battlefield, these people had actually joined the Greenskins—a repeat of what happened in Cerebrio.
They had proactively attacked the human legions led by Beastmen!
They were dressed and equipped like a regular Kingdom legion.
To the point where, until the enemy's bullets and arrows rained down upon them, the human warriors of the tribe who died in battle were still filled with confusion:
Why is the Kingdom's army appearing here?
How could they... attack us!
Everything from the gear they used to their dog tags, accents, and captured marching supplies revealed their identity:
Without a doubt, the majority were from the Royal Army of Magritta!
There were even soldiers from the pride of the nation, the Estalian Tercio!
And now, the Kingdom legions that were supposed to protect the nation and fight the enemy to the death were standing with their enemy—the instigator of this disaster, the Greenskins.
They were launching an offensive against another human unit that no longer belonged to the Kingdom, but still consisted of Estalians...
After Al processed everything, he only felt one thing:
Damn!
If I knew it was this easy to make them kneel, why did I bother with all that effort!
I should have just started hitting them!
From North to South, leveling city after city, conquering them, and organizing a Tribal Green Standard—no, an Estalian Human Eight Banners... [References to Manchu puppet/conquest armies].
Al could understand the Magrittans submitting, but this "sliding kneel" seemed far too smooth.
Not only sending supplies and doing logistics, but they even sent troops to the front lines as cannon fodder.
And they sent regular national troops at that.
Was the siege so brutal they were broken into puppets?
Reparations, tribute, conscription.
They've hit the full set.
Al was laughing in his heart while cursing on the outside. It didn't matter; if they could kneel to Greenskins, they'd kneel even more smoothly when the tribal army arrived.
However, he still had to put on a face of shared indignation.
He briefly criticized the prisoners for having no honor and no conviction.
He soothed the human warriors of the tribe, stating he would immediately send the prisoners to the rear and would compile a detailed report of the incident for the Northern Council to review.
Currently, they were the only "orthodoxy" left in Estalia.
Regarding the news of Magritta's fall, Al knew a bit of the inside story, but he hadn't expected the situation to be like this.
He grumbled internally. This better not stir up some misplaced patriotism in the Mortal Auxilia—like "traitors falling, the Kingdom banner rising" kind of nonsense. Intense emotions anchored elsewhere were bad for spreading the faith of the Four Mothers.
But the prisoners were miserable in their own right.
First, the Greenskins demanded labor and resources. Then they demanded the Southerners send troops to sweep through the Beastman tribes in the forest alongside them.
This wasn't in the terms of the treaty, but since the Magrittans had even dismantled their city walls and accepted terms that were a "ceasefire" internally but a surrender in reality, they found it hard to defy the Warlord's demands. They could only reluctantly scrape together a unit to join the expedition.
If the Greenskins ordered them to attack the North—to hit Estalia's own cities—this army would surely be unwilling.
Even if the Greenskins forced them at swordpoint, it honestly wouldn't be very effective. They might even revolt on the spot and defect to the other side.
But to go with their "Greenskin Masters" and hit some so-called "rampant Beastman tribe" in the Piña Forest?
This Estalian army, now degraded to the status of "Puppet Troops," may have had low combat will, but it didn't matter. It was just an order from the Masters and the Council. Let's do it!
Who knew their first battle would be against Al's Mortal Auxilia?
In an instant, the traitors were unmasked. Their puppet status was exposed.
They thought they weren't going to the North, just fighting in the South.
And their opponent was a Beastman tribe—something they hadn't seen much of, but whose name suggested they were probably trash on the level of some Greenskin warband or New World natives.
This force, mainly assembled, trained, and dispatched from Magritta, didn't even bother with disguises.
They marched as if they were a Kingdom legion moving through their own land as they had so many times in the past.
Not that they were very impressive—how much morale can a servant of savages have?—but they maintained the full kit of a regular army.
Dog tags, banners, engravings on supplies—everything indicating their identity was present. The Greenskin-version Mortal Auxilia from Magritta had it all.
Those defeated and captured in the skirmish were instantly exposed by these items, triggering a massive uproar among the tribe's human warriors.
Magritta—the capital they thought had martyred itself, becoming the Kingdom's shame and wound that had to be avenged—had surrendered!
The prisoners stubbornly claiming to be mercenaries was merely a final, useless struggle.
They were just trying to find a fig leaf for themselves and for the city that was now rapidly becoming a source of shame in the mouths of these human warriors mixed with Beastmen.
Al did not treat the prisoners harshly. He had the tribal soldiers escort them to the rear and forbade the human legionaries from accompanying them or spreading the word further.
He planned to keep these prisoners in isolation for now, preventing the news from reaching the Estalians in the rear.
He needed time to consider how to maximize his profit from this situation.
It was highly possible that Al's plan—to let the Greenskins and the North reach a stalemate, then march south, liberate the Southern Realms of Estalia, and replace them—was not far from realization once this battle was over...