An army of twenty-five thousand marched across the wilderness. The large-scale movement of troops was impossible to conceal for long, and the news soon reached Alba through scouts on the grasslands.
Upon learning that Paul Greiman was about to lead his army straight into the heart of the grasslands, Alba did not panic. Instead, he immediately ordered all his trusted generals and the tribal chieftains loyal to the royal tent to gather at the Black Stone Fortress, which he had recently built, for a council.
The Black Stone Fortress stood beside a river in the central grasslands. It was the core stronghold Alba had spent three years painstakingly constructing. Unlike the traditional felt-tent settlements on the grasslands, the city had been built entirely according to the layout of human cities: Tall rammed-earth walls surrounded it, while orderly streets divided the interior into residential, administrative, and workshop districts. There was even a stone palace modeled after the castle of a human lord. None of this would have been possible without the large number of captured human craftsmen and slaves. The human artisans Alba had captured during successive raids had been forced to work on the city's construction. From the rammed-earth walls to the stone carvings in the palace, every detail bore the imprint of human architecture, yet also carried the rugged style of the grassland tribes.
Alba's ambitions went far beyond building a single city. He knew that the grassland tribes had long existed in a loose alliance, lacking unified commands and administration. This was also the root cause of their repeated defeats when fighting humans. Thus, using the Black Stone Fortress as his foundation, he modeled his system after human kingdoms and established bureaucratic institutions within the city, including the Military Affairs Department, Pastoral Administration Department, and Workshop Department. The