Chapter 206: Donning the Crown of the Strongest, the One Named UO
As the true pioneer of Avalon, Rowe could not possibly fail to notice an intruder hiding inside this dimensional pocket, suspended between the Sea of Stars and the thin seam of the present World.
He entered from outside.
He brought only his first disciple.
Clad in machina armor, bearing the title of Archangel beneath Yahweh, and wearing the spiritual foundation of a Primordial dragon, Melusine followed at his side.
Nero, after all, was the Roman Emperor. Now that Britannia had been fully subdued, there was follow up work that could not be delayed.
Legions had to be stationed. Coastal routes had to be controlled. Local authority had to be reorganized, then bound into Roman governance with contracts, oaths, and law.
Rowe left Martha behind to assist her.
He, meanwhile, handled his own affairs.
Merlin could not stop his entry. Worse, she could not even sense the moment he arrived.
She understood perfectly who held dominion here.
She was extremely confident in her ability to conceal herself. Nightmares were fairies of illusion, creatures that lived in the boundary between thought and dream. Even if she was not a pure nightmare, even if her existence was a hybrid of human and nightmare, her essence remained intangible, like something you only realize you saw after waking.
Merlin believed Rowe could not immediately locate her within Avalon.
But if Rowe wished to enter, he could do so whenever he pleased.
He was the master.
She was only a traveler, squatting in a corner of his house and calling it residence.
The sea of flowers shivered, scattering endless dust the color of pale blossoms. Merlin tightened her grip on her staff and bowed with practiced elegance toward the man who had appeared before her.
"My name is Merlin. You can call me Merlin."
She blinked, crimson eyes bright. Her smile was sweet enough to be convincing.
"I have admired you for a long time."
"Liar," a voice said from behind Rowe.
It was Melusine, who had pursued Merlin down from the tower, hostility still fresh on her delicate face.
Merlin did not flinch. She only smiled as if she had been complimented.
"It is not a lie. It is natural to admire someone who opened such a place for me, a dwelling that belongs neither to reality nor to the Sea of Stars."
She looked at Melusine with an expression of mild interest, as if observing a child throwing a tantrum.
Melusine was alive. That had been beyond Merlin's expectation.
But alive did not mean free.
Looking at her now, Merlin understood. Whatever had happened, the dragon had been subdued by the King of the Wild Hunt standing before her.
If Merlin could convince that King, then nothing would happen to her.
She shifted her gaze away from Melusine and returned it to Rowe.
"I do not think you came here only to find me, did you?"
Rowe's expression did not change.
"You guess."
"I do not guess." Merlin spread her hands slightly, as if offering herself as a solution. "No matter what you want to do, I can help you."
"Even the King of the Wild Hunt, even a king who can create and anchor stars, has places where he needs help. Do you not?"
"Anything is fine?" Rowe asked.
"Of course."
Merlin's smile brightened.
It had to be admitted, she was beautiful.
The white fur like robe draped over her concealed more than it revealed, which only made the revealed parts sharper. Nightmares, or what humans more crudely called succubi, had always been born to blur the line between desire and dream.
Merlin was no exception.
Crystal clear hair framed an exquisitely shaped face. Bare shoulders showed fair skin. Her chest, modest yet perfectly formed, rose and fell with quiet confidence. The lift of her arms revealed the soft curve of her body. Her waist was slender, then flared into rounded lines that belonged more to a dream than to anatomy.
Below the hem of her robe, black stockings wrapped her thighs, and her legs swayed slightly as if she were already sitting in someone else's attention.
Merlin had existed for a long time. She had never needed to use beauty as a tool.
But if the other party was strong enough, she did not mind.
She even wondered if it might count as entertainment.
Rowe smiled.
"Good. I have only one request."
Merlin's eyes narrowed with interest, ready to accept anything that did not involve consequences.
Rowe spoke calmly, almost kindly.
"Be a human sandbag and let my disciple vent her anger."
Merlin froze.
She reacted instantly, mouth opening to speak, but Rowe had already turned and walked deeper into Avalon. His footsteps were unhurried, as though he had not just sentenced a legendary magus to a lesson in pain.
Behind Merlin, Melusine cracked her knuckles, expression eager in a way that did not fit her small frame.
"Do not kill her," Rowe said without looking back.
"Do not worry," Melusine replied at once. "I promise I will not kill her."
Merlin stared after them, the smile on her face finally becoming stiff.
To charm Rowe was something even a certain Nine Tailed Fox, one of Humanity's Evils, could not accomplish.
How would a mere nightmare manage it?
From the beginning, Rowe had treated her like a toy that talked too much.
He did not hate her, and he had no intention of killing her. Letting Melusine vent her anger was enough.
Rowe himself had come for something else.
As Merlin had said, he did not enter Avalon to chase her.
He had a purpose.
"The Sea of Stars," Rowe murmured as he walked. "I have heard the name for a long time."
Power beyond the stars could not be shaken.
Might comparable to a fixed star could not be destroyed.
Something that existed within the planet, yet carried force that surpassed what a planet should contain. A core that did not belong to a single era.
Rowe had sensed it many times. Heard it referenced many times.
This was the first time he could approach it closely, intimately.
Since he had come, he would not leave without understanding.
As for the unknown, and whatever danger sat inside it, those had never been things Rowe worried about.
"What exactly is the Sea of Stars?"
An answer rose, not as a voice in the air, but as knowledge shaped by proximity, the way truth sometimes surfaced when one stood at the right boundary.
If someone had to describe it, the Sea of Stars was the core of the planet's essence.
Not the core of one planet.
The core shared across infinite world lines, spanning time and space, unified as a single foundation beneath countless possibilities.
If Earth were a tree, then each world formed by different choices would be a branch, growing in a different direction.
The Sea of Stars was the root.
Because it was the source of innumerable worlds, even after the Age of Gods ended, gods and phantasmal species could still find places to exist within it.
Among the countless world lines tied to the root, there would always be regions where the Age of Gods had not yet ended.
And because it unified so much across so many branches, human order could become monstrously strong.
Humans were not stronger than gods.
But humans possessed change.
Every choice created divergence. Every divergence created a new world.
That endless variation was something gods did not possess.
"So that is it," Rowe said quietly.
He lowered his gaze and stopped at the deepest part of Avalon.
Ahead lay a space illuminated by endless brilliance, like a paradise made from pure existence.
That was the Sea of Stars.
If the Imaginary Number Space was absolute nothingness, then the Sea of Stars was endless existence.
Rowe took another step, then halted.
He turned his head toward the side.
A figure stood within the light.
"What is your purpose in telling me all this?"
The figure was a small girl, pale hair like perpetual polar ice, and a light blue dress like ocean currents. Brown, green, and yellow ribbons and threads adorned her, like land layered over sea.
Everything about her produced a single sensation in the mind.
The world.
She was the restraining force of the planet's natural sphere, an instinctive manifestation born from the planet's desire to continue.
Rowe's eyes narrowed.
"Gaia?"
The restraining force pondered for a moment. Her face did not change, her voice without emotion.
"I tell you because you have walked here. Your existence is worthy of knowing."
"Revelation?"
"It can also be called the Voice of the World."
Natural revelation. The planet's whisper. Knowledge given not by mercy, but by position.
If one had the capability, and had arrived, then one had the right to know.
Gaia looked at Rowe, blue eyes reflecting the brilliance of the Sea of Stars.
"And do not forget. You also bear the identity of a god."
"Gods are extensions of the world, and a layer of protection for the world."
"This world is about to face disaster."
Rowe did not speak, but his focus sharpened.
Disaster.
Human order incineration? Human order freezing?
Gaia's gaze remained steady.
"Neither."
Her emerald eyes reflected something colossal, something that did not belong in a stable history.
"The disaster comes from the land you stand on."
"Britannia."
"In a world line that should have been pruned, in a destroyed world, the evil god who gathered the grievances of an entire world after death."
"The Horned God, Cernunnos."
"He will invade here through the Sea of Stars."
"His grievances will cover the world."
"His power will inundate the surface."
A god of a Lostbelt.
Rowe's expression remained calm, but the weight of the name sank into the air between them.
"You want me to fight him?"
"He was attracted by you," Gaia said. "By the Atlantis fire seed you once possessed."
"At the moment you achieved the Primordial."
Fire seed.
Life.
Continuation.
The dead Horned God had come for that.
Gaia's voice did not soften, but something like intent sharpened inside it.
"I want to survive."
"And you are qualified."
"I hope even more that you can become a UO."
The UO of Earth.
The reason Gaia appeared here was not only to warn him. It was to place a crown on him, whether he wanted it or not.
A UO was an existence every star possessed, the representative of a planet's will. A pinnacle existence, the highest and greatest King.
Earth, until now, had never had its own King.
Because Earth was unique.
Because the Sea of Stars gave this planet too much complexity.
The throne of UO had remained vacant.
Now Gaia chose Rowe.
Because Rowe had the qualification.
And because Gaia had seen what approached.
She required an existence powerful enough to drag the world through what was coming.
"Is that truly so," Rowe said, and smiled.
He had stepped into Avalon's deepest region to personally observe the Sea of Stars, but also because he had sensed the restraining force's invitation.
Now Gaia had revealed her purpose.
The position of UO was trouble. Even on the surface, Rowe was not the strongest.
Primordial gods still slept, or wandered within the Imaginary Number Space.
Ancestral gods of Divine Land still existed.
A certain Transcendent, the Awakened One, Buddha, had already manifested.
Rowe was still far from the peak.
If he became a UO, he would become a target.
And then there was the disaster Gaia described. Cernunnos, bearing the grievances of a destroyed world line, a calamity that had already crushed a world.
Its energy level would not be lower than a Star Creating God.
Yet if Rowe could firmly seize the position of UO, he would gain more power.
Closer to the planet itself.
Closer to comprehending the sky's authority.
Did he have any reason to hesitate?
"I accept," Rowe said. "I will become the UO of this planet."
"Good."
For the first time, something like relief flickered across Gaia's face.
"The UO is the proof of the planet."
"It is the King of the current world."
"Therefore, you must become the King of the current world. The King of Kings. The Lord of Lords."
Her gaze turned distant, as if measuring time as easily as distance.
"Five hundred years from now, Corbenic will land upon this earth."
"You do not have much time."
"Influence the world as much as you can."
"The world at this moment is the world of humanity."
"When that time comes, I will crown you with the planet's diadem."
"I wish for you to become the strongest, and the farthest reaching existence."
The figure before him began to fade.
Yet even as she vanished, Rowe could still feel Gaia's gaze resting on him.
Rowe chuckled softly.
"Five hundred years."
"The era of King Arthur."
He looked into the brilliance of the Sea of Stars and spoke with quiet certainty.
"Then let me wait and see."
"One step forward. Is it death, or transcendence?"
He turned as if leaving an agreement behind him like a nail hammered into the world.
"This planet's diadem, keep it for me."
Moon Cell.
UO.
Both were calamities that could threaten the world.
Both were also goals Rowe intended to seize.
From this point onward, he would surely wear the planet's diadem, and fight with everything he had to protect the world.
Not because he was kind.
Because it was his path.
Because a king who could not protect his territory was only a thief with a crown.
Voices rose from below the Tower of Avalon, sharp and chaotic.
"Wait, gently."
"Do not worry. I will not beat you to death. Do not even think about running."
"You cannot escape, you damned nightmare."
A one sided beating continued beneath the tower, accompanied by Merlin's increasingly strained composure and Melusine's disturbingly sincere enthusiasm.
At the same time, outside Britannia.
Orders moved like fire across parchment.
"Appoint Boudica as the Lord of Britannia."
"Dispatch five legions to garrison Britannia."
"Britannia is officially incorporated into Roman rule. It will no longer be merely controlled without governance."
"The province of Britannia will implement Roman law."
One administrative command after another left the mountain where Nero resided.
Britannia began to change, not slowly, but with the violence of a world being rewritten.
Day by day, it renewed.
Nero set down the final parchment and let out a satisfied breath.
"Hm. Finally finished."
Then she paused and shook her head, cowlick bobbing.
No.
When Rowe returned, he would have to shoulder part of the Emperor's duties.
It was only proper.
The girl stood and walked outside, fiery red skirt blooming like a rose.
She knew.
Rowe would be back soon.
And next, they would leave Britannia, returning to Rome.
"This is my Rome," Nero murmured. "And it is also your Rome."
History would write it differently, with ink and distance and judgment.
At the beginning of the Common Era, the Roman Empire, towering over the world, welcomed its new Emperor.
Nero Claudius.
Like a rising sun, the consul who had just ascended the throne took her first step and swept away the rebellions of the north.
Some called her a rose Emperor, like fire, and said the empire under her would also become a nation of flame.
Flame brought light.
Flame also brought disaster.
But Rome had gained an earthly king.
And in this year, it also welcomed a heavenly king.
History of Rome.
In the city of Rome, within the Senate, the hearth fire burned low.
Several elderly figures sat facing one another.
They were the oldest senators, patriarchs of the great families, the men who treated Rome as a ledger and the throne as an asset.
They had received news from the north.
Now they discussed it.
"We thought she meant only to drive out barbarians who dared to trespass on Rome."
"We did not expect her to accomplish what no consul before her achieved. Complete control of Britannia."
"Nero Claudius, Caligula's niece."
Their voices were soft, but the fear under them was not.
"An Emperor who is too strong is not good for us."
"Another Caligula who is not mad? No. Our new Majesty has already surpassed Caligula."
"If the flames burn too fiercely, they may burn the one who holds them."
Their words echoed through the elegant room, woven together with calculation, unease, and different shades of ambition.
.....
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