Chapter 196: Storming the Palace, Facing Me Head On
Above the Roman Palace, divine radiance took shape upon the earth.
Rowe was not surprised.
Even if the Age of Gods had long since receded, Rome did not grow from empty soil. Its faith inherited Greece. Its deities inherited Greece. The names changed, the masks changed, the functions remained.
And even now, those gods could still manifest, leaning on the degraded human vessels they had left behind long ago.
Greece once walked with gods.
Rome was no different.
The only distinction was that Rome's gods, as Authorities tied to natural concepts, could exert less power in the present era than they once wielded in the Greek period. Their true bodies were constrained. Their grandeur was thinned.
But that was only in comparison to their past selves.
To humans, a god was still a god.
So when Rowe said what he said, the bound Imperial Guards froze. The struggling commander froze. Even Nero Claudius froze where she stood.
Blasphemy was not a joke in Rome.
Rome praised freedom of thought, yes, but that was philosophy, not permission to spit in the face of heaven. Disrespecting a god was still a crime, especially when the god in question was Mars.
The patron deity of Rome.
The founder of Rome.
The War God.
Everyone went rigid.
Rowe only chuckled.
With a lazy motion, he returned the chains binding the Imperial Guards to the Gate of Babylon, as if he were putting away tools after a brief errand.
Then he looked up.
In the sky, the vast divine light spread like a pair of eyes slowly opening, layered misty radiance unfolding outward. Within it, a tall shadow took form.
It stood on two legs, arms slightly spread.
A shell of forged steel glowed crimson like banked flame. High shoulders carried bulky vitality devices. Both hands were fitted with propulsion mechanisms that churned with lava like power. Flame jets flared beneath its feet. Its head was sharp and angular, helmet like, and beneath the brow, two eyes flickered with dark violet light.
In its hands was a giant sword, crimson and flowing with light.
War God Mars.
"Hail to great Mars!"
The Imperial Guards dropped to their knees as one. The commander swayed and bowed his head, voice tight with fear.
"Great Mars, we did not intend to disturb you, but the invaders are too powerful. We cannot stop them!"
"I know."
The massive figure nodded.
It descended from the heavens, and as it fell, its towering steel form compressed and converged, shrinking until, when its feet touched the ground, it stood only somewhat taller than an ordinary man.
Even so, the pressure did not lessen.
Nero's breath caught. Sweat beaded at her hairline. Her tension was not only from power. It was from the weight of what Mars represented, hammered into her since childhood by every lesson, every ritual, every story told with reverent fear.
She reached out and lightly poked Rowe's arm.
"How about you go first, Lord Rowe?"
Her voice was small, but steady.
"I am still Roman royalty. If I stay, they will not dare touch me."
It was a decision made through fear, not despite it.
Nero revered the gods, as any Roman raised properly would. Yet she had too much stubborn courage in her bones to lose the will to act simply because a divine shadow had stepped into the world.
Rowe waved a hand.
"No need."
He met Mars's gaze.
Mars met his.
Then a hearty laugh rolled out, warm and unrestrained.
"Hahahaha. A thousand years unseen, and your presence is still dazzling."
"My Father."
For a moment, the street forgot how to breathe.
The Imperial Guards choked on their own disbelief. Nero's mouth fell open.
So he really meant it.
Rowe stepped closer and tapped the steel plate over Mars's chest with two fingers, casual as if greeting an old drinking companion.
"Hard to compete with you. From Ares to Mars, and you even found your machina god body again."
Mars replied as if this were the most ordinary topic in the world.
"The foundation of a god's strength is to layer one's traces onto the river of time, tracing back to the origin. My past includes this lost machina god body, does it not?"
The Imperial Guards stared harder. Nero looked like she had walked into a myth and found it arguing in plain daylight.
Mars ignored them and continued, tone bright.
"My Father, what brings you here this time?"
"I came to…"
Rowe paused.
Mars laughed again, already waving it off.
"Forget it. I have a feeling it is nothing serious."
Rowe's eyes narrowed.
"Have I become that sort of person in your eyes?"
"Hahaha. What else would you be? When have you ever been serious?"
Rowe fell silent for a beat, as if deciding whether to be offended or amused.
Mars leaned in with a grin that somehow translated through cold metal.
"Is that how you treat your father?"
"Hahaha. You did not say that when you were beating me."
Rowe's tone remained calm.
"Do you believe I cannot beat you now?"
For all his progress, Mars understood one truth perfectly. Regardless of titles, Rowe's foundation came from a lineage that could suppress him. Even with a restored machina god body, Mars could not pretend the imbalance did not exist.
Yet Mars only laughed harder.
"Hit me, then. As long as you do not kill me."
Rowe's expression shifted, faintly appreciative.
"You are different from before."
This was Rowe's first truly meaningful face to face meeting with Mars in this era. The god's temperament no longer felt like brute force and reckless heat alone. It carried wit, and a strange elegance, the posture of a strategist rather than a berserker.
The War God, not merely a god of war.
Mars's gaze slid sideways, almost teasing.
"Some people have not changed."
Then he added, lightly, "And it seems you have trouble with another one again?"
Rowe's eyes flicked toward Nero.
"This one is not."
Mars's laughter turned sharp with understanding.
"Not yet, you mean."
Rowe lifted a hand.
Mars took two steps back at once, a completely unconscious retreat.
Rowe gave him a sidelong look.
"And you claim you are not afraid."
Mars coughed, as if offended by the accuracy.
Rowe's tone became more businesslike.
"Enough. I am here for serious work. Clear these people out first."
On Mars's iron face, something like a human expression appeared, exaggerated by the mechanical design.
He nodded.
"Alright."
He turned, and in the name of Mars, issued orders.
The effect was immediate. The Imperial Guards obeyed the War God far more readily than the Roman Emperor. The soldiers withdrew in disciplined silence, carrying the bound commander and dragging their stunned certainty along with them.
Rowe walked back to Nero's side.
The princess's ahoge still swayed above her golden hair, as if it were also trying to process the scene.
She blinked at Rowe, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Are you truly the father of War God Mars?"
"Yes, and no," Rowe said. He neither denied nor confirmed in the way she wanted. "That was nearly a thousand years ago."
Nero stiffened, then her face lit with recognition, like a page in her memory finally turning.
"Wait. Nearly a thousand years ago?"
Her eyes widened further.
"Are you the Greek sage Rowe? The one from the stories, the one spoken of alongside Heracles?"
Rome inherited Greek myth. Names were translated. Titles were altered. Legends remained.
Nero had heard of him.
She had simply never expected to meet him while hiding in an alley with stolen moon tainted Authority on her hand.
Mars's reaction left no room for disbelief.
So Nero's excitement surged, overflowing into curiosity that immediately became dangerous.
"You lived for a thousand years? How? Are you still human? What are you now? Did you become something strange?"
Her hand reached for his robe without thinking.
Rowe slapped it away with a flat palm and a flat stare.
"Enough."
Nero tilted her head, tongue peeking out briefly, as if she had realized she overstepped.
"Umu. Are you angry, Lord Rowe?"
She looked like someone who understood she was wrong and still planned to do it again later.
Rowe's gaze darkened.
"Enough. Serious work."
Nero snapped upright, finally remembering why she was here.
"Oh, right. Caligula. I came to find my uncle Caligula."
Rowe's expression suggested he had already assumed she would forget at least once.
A soft clicking echoed.
Gears turned.
Mars's machina god body strode forward. The Roman soldiers were gone now. Only the three remained before the palace.
Mars leaned down slightly, dark violet eyes fixed on Nero.
A low hum sounded.
"Is that the niece of the madman, the one whose will has been eroded by Moon Cell?"
Nero planted her hands on her waist. Her red skirt fluttered, and she stood her ground with the pride of Rome.
"Umu. That is correct. It is I, Nero Claudius."
Mars made an appreciative sound that might have been laughter.
"It is impressive that you still dare return."
His eyes gleamed behind the iron mask.
Then he looked back to Rowe.
"However, my Father, I do not mind if you go in alone."
Rowe and Nero spoke at the same time.
"Why?"
"Umu?"
Rowe's was confusion, edged with caution. Nero's was agreement, as if she had simply accepted that she was now watching a play where gods argued about her as a prop.
Mars's tone shifted.
He understood Rowe's strength. Even without knowing the full extent of Rowe's progress after leaving Greece, Mars knew what it meant to exist on the level that once rivaled Zeus at his height.
That was not something Mars could reach.
Even as one of Rome's supreme gods, Mars remained, in the end, a regional god king. His power could press upon a continent, not the whole planet.
Yet even so, he warned them.
"Caligula is contaminated by the Moon. That madness is something I refuse to touch."
His voice grew colder.
"Caligula's lunar contamination has nothing to do with Diana, meaning Artemis of old."
He paused, choosing precision.
"He was infected by a terrifying entity that resides on the Moon."
"He cannot bear the information it pours into him. He goes mad, then lucid, then mad again. His personal power is not great, but the occasional immensity of the information revealed through his mind is something none of us wish to contact, and none of us wish to be tainted by."
Moon Cell was a machine.
Machina gods also ran on machine hearts.
But they were not Moon Cell.
Naturally, they feared it.
Nero glanced at Rowe with an expression that said, see, I told you.
Rowe's response was a faint smile.
Not fear.
Excitement.
"Mars," Rowe said quietly.
"Present, my Father."
"You understand me."
Mars did not answer immediately.
Rowe continued, voice steady.
"Do you think I fear death?"
Mars fell silent.
Afraid?
Of course not.
If Mars was honest, Rowe had always walked toward danger the way other people walked toward food. Sometimes Mars even suspected Rowe was looking for death, but had no evidence, only a lifetime of witnessing impossible decisions.
Rowe walked past Mars toward the Roman Palace.
"He is going in already?" Nero muttered, and for the first time since Mars appeared, her fear thinned into something like fascination.
"Umu. This is terrifying."
She followed, because she always did.
They stopped before the palace doors.
Rowe spoke one name, plain as a summons.
"Caligula."
Daylight still filled the city, yet the Roman Palace was drenched in moonlight. Shadows flowed down from empty air, as if the sky itself had opened a wound.
Inside, someone danced.
Caligula.
Dancing with the Moon.
The dance was inverted. Mad. Every careless movement carried the flow of infinite information, enough that an ordinary mind would numb, collapse, or die simply by seeing it.
Humans could not see it.
Gods would not see it.
Rowe saw it clearly.
And he smiled.
Mars watched, solemn, and felt a strange anticipation. He wanted to see what Rowe would do.
Would he force his way in?
He would.
Then a grand sound rang out.
An ancient bell toll.
Yet within that bell's resonance, something else seemed to ride the vibration, an invisible whisper that scraped across reality like a blade.
It was not elegant.
It was not sacred.
It was brutally effective.
Nero's eyes brightened. She could not catch the insult itself, but she could hear the whispering pressure behind it.
It sounded, to her artist's ear, both flawed and strangely complete.
"Umu," she murmured, almost reverent. "From an artistic perspective, it is full of imperfections, yet it also feels… perfect."
In that instant, the Roman princess had an inspiration that would cause pain to future musicians.
Mars said nothing.
One could only admit that after a thousand years, Rowe's method of provoking disaster had remained consistent.
But Mars did not know one detail.
If Rowe truly wished to curse, to provoke, to tear open a mind's restraint, he no longer needed to craft the words himself. He only needed to strike the chaos within his own mind, and the sound produced became the optimal brain shattering divine noise.
Rowe was not only storming the Roman Palace.
He was trying to enrage Caligula, pushing his connection to Moon Cell to its maximum.
Then, one of two outcomes would occur.
Either Rowe would kill him and remain undefeated.
Or Caligula would kill him, and Rowe would seize a fully optimized Authority of Moon Cell through the collision.
Rowe's voice rose, calm and merciless.
"Come on, mad Caligula."
From deep within the Roman Palace, a roar answered, furious and animal.
"Roar!"
It howled at the sky.
.....
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