General Atticus Cassius Cyprian had learned long ago that armies rarely died because of one catastrophic decision. They died because of a slow, corrosive accumulation of small mistakes.
A scout misjudged a river crossing. An officer misread a dispatch in the flickering lamplight. A supply wagon broke an axle on a rutted mountain road. A messenger took the wrong fork in the woods. A sentinel blinked against the midnight drizzle. Then, by the time the general realized something had gone fundamentally wrong, thousands of men were already choking on their own blood in the mud.
That was why Cassius hated surprises. Surprises were the breeding ground of ruin.
Unfortunately, the obsidian-dark anomaly standing on the rolling limestone hill before him was not merely a surprise; it was a rupture in the fabric of reality itself.
Cassius leaned over the heavy oak command table, his knuckles pressing hard against the wood. The tactical map spread out before him was crude, hastily inked by military engineers who had been jolted awake only hours earlier. The surrounding hills of the Saderan borderlands had been hastily sketched in charcoal. A narrow stream, the Althos, wound its way across the parchment like a vein of bruised silver.
At the dead center of the map was the Gate.
It occupied the crest of the highest rise, defying every known law of magic and architecture. It was an enormous, cyclopean archway of weathered grey stone, towering three times the height of a mounted knight. Two massive pillars supported a lintel carved with baffling, non-Saderan motifs. And between them hung a void—not shadow, not smoke, but a solid sheet of absolute darkness that seemed to swallow the afternoon sunlight as it spilled across the grass.
Cassius stared at it through narrowed eyes. At thirty-six years of age, he was a man forged in the crucible of Imperial expansion. His beard was neatly trimmed, his short dark hair damp from the mountain mist, and his sharp brown eyes reflected the flickering amber of the tent's oil lamps. His armor was practical—polished bronze and boiled leather, serviceable rather than ornamental—and a heavy crimson cloak was pinned across his right shoulder by a bronze clasp bearing the double-headed Imperial crest of Sadera.
He was not a court politician. He was not some pampered patrician who had purchased a general's commission with stolen gold. He was a career soldier who had earned every stripe on his tunic through cold calculation and spilled blood.
Yet now, standing at the edge of the known world, Atticus Cassius Cyprian had no earthly idea what manner of war he was about to unleash.
The command tent was choked with the acrid stench of sweat, wet wool, hot lamp oil, and crushed bracken. Officers moved in hurried, silent urgency between map tables. Couriers stood rigid near the entrance, awaiting the snap of a command. Outside, echoing across the valley, sounded the rhythmic thud of thousands of iron picks striking earth, the shouted curses of centurions, and the heavy rumble of supply carts as tens of thousands of Saderan legionnaires threw up a massive fortified camp around the Gate.
The order had come directly from the Marble Palace in Sadera, bearing the personal seal of Emperor Molt Sol Augustus himself.
The initial report had sounded like the delirious ravings of drunken border guards. A magical portal had materialized out of thin air on a deserted hilltop. A patrol of scouts had crossed through it out of sheer morbid curiosity. On the other other side, they had found not a savage wilderness, not a cluster of mud huts or bandit encampments, but a city.
A city carved of white marble and gleaming stone, sprawling across a coastal plain with an architectural symmetry that made the Imperial capital look like a disorganized rookery.
And then the communication had abruptly cut out.
The second report, delivered by bloodied survivors who had stumbled backward through the portal hours later, had turned the Imperial court from curious to frantic. The expedition soldiers claimed they had been ambushed not by barbarians, but by an army. An army wearing unfamiliar armor, carrying strange rectangular shields, wielding weapons that flashed with arcane fire, and moving with an unnatural, clockwork discipline.
Molt Sol Augustus had reacted with the speed of an apex predator. The Senate had been bypassed; the elite legions of the capital had been mobilized before sunset. And Cassius, renowned for his cold tactical poise, had been placed at the head of the vanguard.
A sudden rustle of heavy canvas tore through his thoughts.
A messenger tumbled into the tent, his boots caked in thick clay, his chest heaving as if he had run the entire length of the perimeter.
Cassius looked up, his expression unreadable. "Report."
The young soldier dropped into a crisp, military bow. "General."
Cassius waited, letting the silence stretch just enough to steady the boy's breathing.
"Some of the auxiliary units who crossed into the portal during the second wave... they've come back," the messenger stammered, his eyes wide with lingering terror.
Cassius straightened slowly. "Back? Through the Gate?"
"Yes, General. Minutes ago."
"How many?"
The messenger swallowed hard. "Several hundred, sir. That's all that's left of the third cohort."
Cassius exchanged a swift, dark glance with his chief of staff. He stepped away from the map table, his hand resting instinctively on the pommel of his gladius. "Where are they?"
"At the southern perimeter, near the supply lines. They're... they're in a bad way, sir."
"Get my helm," Cassius ordered.
The tent erupted into controlled motion. Cassius strode out into the biting air of the hill.
The encampment was an anthill of frantic preparation. To the east, engineers were driving ten-foot wooden stakes into the perimeters. To the west, auxiliary archers occupied the elevated ridge, drawing bowstrings and checking quivers. Above them all, the Gate loomed like a great open wound in the sky, its black surface undulating faintly as if breathing.
Cassius found the survivors huddled near a cluster of supply wagons. The sight was sobering. Their armor was battered, dented inward by tremendous impacts. Many were bleeding from ugly, jagged lacerations; others were being carried on makeshift stretchers by grim-faced medics. Their eyes held the hollow, haunted stare of men who had stared into the maw of an abyss and barely escaped its jaws.
He stopped before a blood-splattered centurion whose shoulder guard had been sheared cleanly off.
"Centurion," Cassius said, his voice cutting through the groans of the wounded.
The officer looked up, flinching before snapping to a ragged salute. "General."
"What happened on the other side?"
The centurion opened his mouth, his cracked lips trembling. He stared past Cassius, as if the horrors of the marble city were still replaying behind his eyelids.
"We expected a clearing," the officer whispered hoarsely. "A fringe settlement. Easy slaves. Easy tribute for the Empire."
"And instead?"
"We walked out onto a paved avenue wide enough to march ten cohorts abreast," the centurion said, his voice dropping to a shuddering whisper. "Buildings... palaces of pure white stone that scraped the clouds. Statues of marble and gold. And the people—they looked at us not with fear, but with the cold, assessing gaze of executioners."
Murmurs rippled through the gathered officers. Cassius raised a hand, silencing them instantly. "The army?"
"They weren't city guards, General," the centurion said, grabbing Cassius's leather gauntlet with a desperate grip. "They were legionnaires. Thousands of them. They wore steel that didn't rust, carried shields that locked together like a fortress wall, and... and their weapons. By the gods, their weapons."
"Speak, man," Cassius commanded softly.
"They threw spears that exploded upon impact," the centurion choked out. "Magic—high-tier casting without a single chant or ritual circle. Their mages didn't need time to weave spells; they unleashed lightning and fire with a flick of their wrists. And their coordination... they moved as one single beast. When we charged, their line didn't bend. It shattered us. We lost half our men in twenty minutes."
Cassius felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. A civilization capable of fielding thousands of heavy infantry with instantaneous magical support and explosive munitions was not a collection of primitive tribes. It was an empire. A rival to Sadera.
"Why did they let you return?" Cassius asked, his eyes narrowing. "If they possessed such overwhelming strength, why not press the advantage and push through the Gate?"
The centurion shook his head, a look of utter bewilderment crossing his dust-streaked face. "They didn't chase us. When we broke and ran back toward the black mist, they simply... stopped. They formed a wall at the threshold, watched us flee, and held their ground. They weren't afraid of us, General. They were waiting."
Waiting.
The word echoed ominously in Cassius's mind. An enemy that did not pursue out of bloodlust, but exercised disciplined restraint, was infinitely more dangerous than a horde of savages. They were probing. They were analyzing Saderan strength.
Cassius turned on his heel, his crimson cloak snapping in the wind.
"Hear me!" he shouted to the officers and centurions crowding the ridge. "From this exact moment, nobody crosses through that Gate without my direct, written authorization! Double the perimeter watch! Move the heavy ballistae to the forward slope! I want every archer on the eastern ridge, and keep the wyvern riders in reserve behind the tree line!"
An auxiliary tribune stepped forward, looking alarmed. "General! The Emperor and the Senate expect a swift conquest. If we hunker down like frightened hares—"
Cassius whirled around, his brown eyes flashing with sudden, incandescent fury. The tribune snapped his mouth shut.
"If we charge blindly into an unknown empire with thousands of disciplined heavy infantry waiting on the other side, we will not conquer a province—we will dig our own mass graves!" Cassius snarled, his voice carrying the absolute authority of a veteran commander. "We fortify this hill. We turn this ridge into an impenetrable stone fortress. If whatever lives beyond that dark arch wants war, they will have to claw their way over every corpse in this army to reach Sadera."
He took a deep breath, his expression hardening back into its mask of cold, resolute iron.
"Send a message to the capital," Cassius murmured, gazing up at the dark, humming monolith. "Tell the Emperor that the expedition has encountered a sovereign, highly organized civilization... and that we must prepare for total war."
…
Miles away, on the other side of the obsidian veil, the atmosphere was entirely different.
The emergency had transformed the capital of the newly founded Roman Empire—a magnificent metropolis that had materialized from the System's foundational gift—into a humming hive of industrial and military might. Paved basalt roads crisscrossed the sprawling urban center, carrying horse-drawn supply wagons, marching auxiliary units, and couriers on pegasi.
At the center of it all stood the Imperial Palace, its white marble colonnades gleaming in the crisp sunlight. And just beyond the grand plaza, dominating the eastern district, stood the Gate—a towering, pulsing rectangle of absolute blackness, surrounded by three deep rings of defensive earthworks, ballista batteries, and shimmering warding barriers woven by imperial battle mages.
Imperator Maximus Messala stood upon the marble balcony of the throne room, looking down over his assembled legions.
He was not a native son of this fantasy world. In his past life, Maximinus had been a modern man—a tactical enthusiast, history buff, and devotee of strategy simulations—who had died defending himself in a dark alleyway, only to awaken beneath the auspices of the Roman Empire Building System. Through relentless administrative drive, tactical brilliance, and the relentless acquisition of gacha rewards, master blacksmiths, and millions of citizens, he had carved a thriving, hyper-advanced empire of ninety-three cities and over five million souls out of an uncharted island.
And now, a foreign, bronze-age empire had dared to poke its head through a dimensional anomaly and strike his borders.
Below him, the First and Second Legions stood at absolute attention. Twenty thousand veteran legionnaires—augmented by the System's miraculous blessings, clad in shimmering mithril-alloy plate armor, and wielding weapons etched with glowing alchemical runecraft—formed a sea of disciplined steel.
The courtyard echoed with the rhythmic clank of greaves and the low, murmuring hum of mana-infused weaponry.
Maximus turned away from the balcony as heavy oak-and-gold doors swung open. Legate Marcus entered, his crimson-crested centurion helmet tucked beneath his arm, followed by Gaius, the chief chancellor.
"Your Imperial Majesty," Marcus saluted smartly, his chest swelling with pride as he looked out over the courtyard. "The legions are fully mustered. Mithril plate distribution is complete. The runic explosive pila have been issued to every cohort, and the aerial reconnaissance squads report that the enemy has heavily fortified the hill on the other side of the anomaly."
Maximus walked down the marble steps of the dais, his expression calm, his eyes sharp and analytical. He wore a fitted cuirass of adamantine alloy, polished to a mirror sheen, over a crimson tunic.
"They fortified the hill?" Maximus asked, his voice smooth and measured.
"Extensive trench networks, wooden stockades, and heavy siege engines," Gaius reported, adjusting his scholarly robes. "Preliminary intelligence gathered from our surviving scouts indicates an empire that relies on sheer manpower, slave armies, and traditional feudal hierarchy. They call themselves the Saderan Empire."
Maximus offered a cold, humorless smile. "Saderan. They thought they had stumbled upon an easy frontier village to plunder for slaves and tribute. Instead, they kicked open the door to Rome."
He walked past them, stepping out onto the balcony once more to address the sea of soldiers below. The twenty thousand men instantly snapped to absolute silence. Every eye locked onto their Emperor.
"Legionnaires of Rome!" Maximus's voice rang out, magically amplified by a subtle vocal enhancement, carrying across the massive stone plaza with the resonance of rolling thunder.
"Three days ago, an uninvited force crossed through the threshold of our eastern territory, shedding the blood of our frontier scouts and attempting to bring fire and sword to our borders!"
A low, menacing growl rose from the ranks—a collective vibration of disciplined fury.
"They assumed we were weak. They assumed this world belonged to whoever shouted the loudest and marched the largest mob!" Maximus raised a mailed fist, the sunlight catching the adamantine ring upon his finger. "They were wrong! Today, we cross the threshold. Today, we show them that wherever the eagle flies, wherever the legions march, there is only one law, one civilization, and one sovereign power!"
He swept his hand toward the dark, humming anomaly in the distance.
"For Rome! For the Empire!"
The twenty thousand legionnaires slammed their gladii against their shields in a thunderous unison that shook the very foundations of the marble palaces.
"ROMA INVICTA! ROMA INVICTA! ROMA INVICTA!"
The roar was deafening, a shockwave of sound and martial pride that echoed off the white stone walls of the capital.
Maximus turned back to his generals. "Marcus, take the vanguard. Ensure the mages maintain the defensive wards around the threshold as we step through. I ride at the center of the First Legion."
"As you command, Majesty," Marcus said, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Within minutes, the great military engine of Rome began to move. Cohort by cohort, century by century, the twenty thousand legionnaires marched in flawless geometric precision toward the Gate. Battle mages chanted protective wards, auxiliary cavalry flanked the flanks on trained pegasi, and siege engineers rolled forward heavy scorpion engines capable of launching iron bolts through solid oak.
Maximus mounted his warhorse at the center of the formation, his royal guard—a dozen elite warriors clad in impenetrable adamantine plate—forming an unyielding wall around him.
The army reached the threshold. The air grew suddenly cold, smelling of ozone and ancient stone, as twenty thousand men stepped willingly into the absolute darkness of the anomaly.
…
On the Saderan side of the Gate, General Cassius felt the mountain tremble.
It wasn't a natural earthquake. It was a rhythmic, subterranean vibration—the synchronized footfalls of thousands of iron-shod boots marching in absolute, unbroken cadence.
Standing atop the forward earthworks, Cassius stared through his spyglass at the obsidian archway. The dark veil was rippling violently, casting prismatic shimmers of light across the damp grass of the hill.
"General!" an auxiliary officer shouted, pointing a trembling finger. "They're coming through!"
Not hundreds. Not a raiding party.
An army.
The first Roman legionnaires emerged from the blackness with terrifying speed, stepping out of the void not in a ragged, panicked cluster, but in a pristine, interlocking wall of polished mithril shields. Red cloaks billowed behind them. Standards bearing the golden eagle caught the pale mountain light.
Then came more. And more. And more.
Five thousand. Ten thousand. Fifteen thousand. Twenty thousand heavily armored, perfectly disciplined soldiers poured out of the Gate like molten steel pouring from a furnace, instantly occupying the valley and spreading outward in a massive, flawless semi-circle that dominated the entire plain.
Cassius's face drained of every drop of color. His breath caught in his throat.
"By the all-father..." an aide whispered beside him, dropping his leather scroll. "That's... that's not a vanguard. That's a juggernaut."
Cassius forced his paralyzed limbs to move. He scrambled up onto the wooden observation platform, his eyes darting frantically across the enemy lines. Their armor was uniform, gleaming without a single scratch. Their rectangular shields were massive, overlapping to form an unbroken barrier of defense. Behind the infantry stood rows of siege engines, alchemical artillery, and mages whose staves glowed with an intense, pulsing blue mana that made the air itself taste of copper.
And at the dead center of the formation, flanked by towering warriors in black-and-silver armor that seemed to absorb the light around them, rode the ruler of this impossible empire.
An emperor who wore no crown of fragile gold, but the cold, practical armor of a frontline commander.
"Sound the horns!" Cassius roared, his voice cracking with sudden panic. "Form up! All centurions to the front! Raise the shields! Lower the spears! By the gods, prepare for battle!"
The Saderan camp erupted into a frenzy of frantic motion. Drums thundered. Horns blared across the ridge. Ten thousand Saderan infantrymen rushed to form their lines, while thousands of auxiliary archers scrambled to take up positions along the trenches. Overhead, a squadron of fifty wyvern riders kicked off from the rocky ledges, their reptilian mounts screeching as they gained altitude to dive upon the enemy's flanks.
Midway across the sloping valley, the Roman army came to a synchronized halt. Twenty thousand men stopped dead in their tracks within a single heartbeat, the silence of their obedience stark against the chaotic clatter of the Saderan preparations.
Maximus raised his hand.
The entire Roman advance froze. He urged his horse forward a few paces, flanked by Marcus and two royal guards. Across the field, separated by two hundred yards of trampled grass, General Cassius urged his own mount forward, desperately clutching the reins with sweaty palms.
For a long, agonizing moment, two worlds stared at each other across the killing fields of Falmart.
Primitive brute force versus transcendent alchemical engineering. Feudal chaos versus absolute, bureaucratic discipline.
Cassius raised a white-bordered standard, attempting to signal a parley. He cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting across the distance in the Saderan tongue, demanding to know their lineage and intent.
Maximus didn't need to understand the foreign words. The desperate, defiant body language of the Saderan general spoke volumes.
He turned slightly toward Gaius, who had accompanied the command staff, and his chief linguist. "Do we have their dialect translated yet?"
"Working hypotheses indicate a Latin-derivative root, Majesty," the linguist reported quickly, holding a magical slate. "Roughly archaic Saderan. They are demanding our surrender and offering vassalage."
Maximus let out a cold, short laugh. He looked back at Cassius across the expanse of the valley.
He didn't shout back. He simply raised his right hand, curled his fingers into a fist, and then slowly—deliberately—extended his thumb downward.
The universal language of execution.
Cassius's eyes widened in realization. He jerked his sword from its scabbard and brought it down in a violent, sweeping arc.
"ATTACK! KILL THEM ALL!"
The Saderan line surged forward. Ten thousand infantrymen charged down the slope with a bloodcurdling roar, their bronze-tipped spears lowered, supported by a rain of thousands of iron-headed arrows and the sweeping descent of fifty screeching wyverns plunging from the clouds like feathered demons.
Maximus dropped his hand.
"Legions," he whispered, his voice carrying the calm, absolute weight of destiny. "Show them the wrath of Rome."
Marcus bellowed the command down the line.
"PILA! READY!"
Twenty thousand legionnaires drew back their right arms. The iron-weighted throwing spears, tipped with alchemical runecraft that glowed with a blinding, ethereal blue light, caught the sun.
"Activate Martial Arts!" Marcus roared.
Across the massive Roman formation, twenty thousand soldiers activated their combat techniques simultaneously.
"[Fortify]!"
"[Ability Boost]!"
"[Greater Ability Boost]!"
A shockwave of compressed mana rippled visibly across the Roman lines, dusting the grass with sparkling motes of golden energy. The soldiers' muscles corded; their reflexes heightened to superhuman extremes; their weapons hummed with lethal resonance.
"THROW!"
Twenty thousand runic pila left twenty thousand hands at the exact same fraction of a second.
The sky above the valley didn't just darken; it whistled. A howling, metallic hurricane tore through the air, racing upward in a magnificent, glittering arc before plunging with catastrophic force directly into the charging Saderan vanguard.
General Cassius stared upward, his jaw slackening.
The impact was not merely physical; it was apocalyptic.
The enchanted pila struck the front ranks of the Saderan army with the kinetic force of falling meteors. The alchemical runes carved into the iron tips flared blindingly bright upon contact, piercing through heavy bronze armor, shields, and flesh as if they were made of wet parchment—and then, a millisecond later, detonated.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
A rolling chain of thunderous explosions ripped across the Saderan charge. Shrapnel, fire, and kinetic concussions tore the front three ranks of the Imperial army to ribbons. Men and horses were tossed into the air like discarded toys. The entire vanguard vanished in an instantaneous wall of fire, smoke, and shredded limbs.
Cassius was thrown violently from his horse by the concussive wave, slamming hard into the muddy turf. He scrambled to his feet, coughing violently, his ears ringing with a deafening, high-pitched whine.
He looked back toward his army.
The charge was gone. The front half of the Saderan force had simply ceased to exist.
"Archers! Focus the sky!" Marcus roared.
From the Roman rear, ten thousand composite bowmen drew back their strings. Their arrows were tipped with incendiary runecraft.
"FIRE!"
A second storm of death rose into the heavens, intercepting the diving squadron of wyvern riders. Scores of the giant reptilian beasts shrieked as explosive arrows pierced their wings and chests, turning them into flaming comets that plummeted uncontrollably into the burning hillside.
"Shield wall! Advance!"
The Roman line didn't wait for the smoke to clear. In perfect, unbroken geometric harmony, twenty thousand legionnaires stepped forward in lockstep, their massive rectangular mithril shields forming an impenetrable wall of steel.
The surviving Saderan soldiers, battered, bleeding, and half-mad with terror, attempted to rally. They crashed desperately against the Roman shield wall, hacking with bronze swords and thrusting with spears.
It was a slaughter disguised as combat.
Roman soldiers, operating under the superhuman enhancements of their Martial Arts, countered with horrifying efficiency.
"[Cutting Edge]!" a centurion snarled, his gladius slicing effortlessly through a Saderan spear shaft and the soldier's collarbone in a single, fluid motion.
"[Shield Bash]!" another legionnaire roared, slamming his heavy mithril shield forward with enough force to shatter the ribcages of three Saderan infantrymen, sending them flying backward like ragdolls through the air.
There was no chaos in the Roman ranks. No hesitation. No fear. They moved like the gears of an invincible clockwork engine, grinding the Saderan army into dust beneath iron-shod sandals.
Cassius staggered backward, clutching a bleeding gash on his forehead, watching in paralyzed horror as his magnificent army—the pride of Sadera—was systematically dismantled in less than ten minutes.
The enemy mages hadn't even cast a spell yet. The sheer physical and tactical supremacy of the Roman infantry was absolute.
"Fall back!" Cassius screamed, his voice breaking into a ragged shriek. "FALL BACK THROUGH THE GATE! SAVE WHATEVER YOU CAN!"
The buglers blew the frantic, discordant notes of retreat. The surviving Saderan soldiers didn't need to be told twice; they threw down their weapons, abandoned their standards, and bolted in a panicked, stampeding mob toward the black archway.
The Roman army did not pursue with reckless abandon. They halted on command, reforming their unbreakable shield wall across the valley floor.
Maximus rode slowly to the front of the line, his horse stepping carefully over the shattered wreckage of the Saderan vanguard. He pulled his mount to a stop, gazing up at the smoking ruins of the enemy fortifications and the black, humming void of the Gate.
Across the blood-soaked field, through the drifting haze of black smoke and smoldering campfires, General Cassius stood near the threshold of the Gate, breathless, bleeding, and utterly broken.
Their eyes met across the distance.
Maximus did not gloat. He did not shout insults. He simply looked at the Saderan general with the quiet, terrifying indifference of a god inspecting an insect that had crawled onto his dining table.
Then, Maximus raised his hand.
The twenty thousand legionnaires lowered their weapons in unison, standing at parade rest, a wall of unyielding steel that owned the earth, the sky, and the horizon.
Cassius grabbed his surviving officers by the scruffs of their necks and dragged them backward through the black mist, fleeing back to the capital to deliver a message that would curdle the blood of the Emperor and the Senate.
The land beyond the Gate is ruled by Rome.
And Rome is coming.
…
Silence descended upon the valley of the Gate, broken only by the crackle of distant fires and the groans of the wounded Saderans left behind in the mud.
Marcus rode up beside Maximus, wiping a speck of dust from his adamantine pauldrons.
"The enemy has fully retreated through the anomaly, Majesty," Marcus reported, his tone businesslike and crisp. "Casualties on our side are negligible. Three men with minor bruises from impact; zero fatalities."
Maximus nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the pulsing obsidian surface of the archway.
"They fought with bravery," Maximus murmured, "but bravery without discipline is merely a slower form of suicide."
He pulled up the system interface floating quietly at the edge of his vision.
[EMERGENCY QUEST — SECURE THE ANOMALY]
Status: COMPLETE
Reward Granted: [Gacha Ticket ×3], [Territorial Expansion Blueprint], [Imperial Treasury Boost]
Maximus closed the floating window with a flick of his mind. The quest was complete, but the true reward wasn't a gacha ticket or a chest of gold.
It was a doorway.
A doorway into an entire continent ripe for the taking. A world of magic, dragons, kingdoms, and empires that had remained utterly ignorant of the storm gathering on their shores.
"Marcus," Maximus said, turning his horse around to face his assembled officers and legions.
"Majesty?"
"We are not pushing through the capital of this Saderan Empire today."
Marcus blinked in surprise, raising an eyebrow. "Today, my lord? With twenty thousand fresh troops ready to march?"
Maximus offered a faint, confident smile.
"Today, we establish a permanent, impenetrable Roman fortress around this Gate. We map the immediate terrain. We secure our supply lines. We study their language, their economy, their politics, and their weaknesses."
He swept his gaze across the vast, rolling green hills of Falmart, watching the sun break through the mountain mists to cast a brilliant golden light upon the crimson banners of the Roman Empire.
"Today, we learn," Maximus said, his voice hardening with quiet, unstoppable ambition.
"Tomorrow... we conquer."
Behind him, twenty thousand legionnaires raised their swords and shields toward the heavens, the roar of their unified acclaim shaking the mountains and rolling out across a new world that would never be the same again.
The Saderan Empire had opened a door out of arrogance and greed.
And now, the eternal city of Rome stood upon its threshold.