"He is the savior I summoned by lighting the sacred flame. What does that have to do with you Celts?"
"This is our Britannian land! He chose to come here with us. What does that have to do with you Romans?"
"Britannian land? If I remember correctly, your father mortgaged this place to the Claudius family to repay his debts. According to the contract, this should be called the Seventh Province of Rome. It's my private property!"
The future Roman tyrant pulled out a parchment from her robes, pressed with a fingerprint and overlaid with magecraft runes, and waved it in front of the red-haired First Princess. One hand on her hip, she lifted her chin proudly.
"It was you despicable Romans who forced my father into that situation! It doesn't count!"
The First Princess flushed with anger, accusing the other girl of shamelessness.
"The one who made the deal with your father was Caesar of the House of Julius. To keep his kingdom afloat, your father sank deep into debt and borrowed from our Claudius family to patch the holes. What, now that he can't repay it, he refuses to acknowledge it? I've already overlooked your disgraceful attempt to abduct the creditor, and you still dare accuse me? Truly worthy of Celtic barbarians, utterly unreasonable!"
The blonde girl refused to back down. She climbed onto a tree stump so she stood at the same height as the First Princess, pointed straight at her nose, and fired back without restraint, her sharp tongue and quick thinking fully on display.
"You…!"
The First Princess, never particularly eloquent, was no match for a Roman trained in verbal combat. She was left speechless.
And at least on the surface, the facts were as the blonde girl said.
Decades earlier, to counter pressure from both the Hunnic Empire and the Persian Empire, the Roman Pantheon had dispatched imperial candidates selected by the Six Great Clans to expand outward, seizing wealth, land, and population to ease internal strain.
Britannia, isolated overseas and shrouded in rain and mist year-round, possessed abundant mineral resources, animal pelts, and magecraft materials. It also controlled access to maritime routes leading in and out of the Mediterranean. Gaius Julius Caesar, the imperial candidate of one of the Six Great Clans, led Roman forces to set foot on this undeveloped land.
At first, however, Caesar encountered fierce resistance from Celtic tribes large and small.
He quickly realized that conquering Britannia in one stroke would be difficult. A forced suppression could easily drag Rome into a quagmire of war, yielding little return.
So instead, Caesar supported the major Celtic tribe that first aligned with Rome. He purchased furs, grain, magecraft materials, and even Celtic slaves from its king.
In return, backed by Rome's military deterrence and Caesar's generous financial support, that king became the most powerful among the neighboring tribes, continuously supplying his patron with manpower, food, and resources.
Of course, Caesar was the one profiting. The king, on the other hand, only grew poorer the more business he did.
Moreover, the heir of the House of Julius was shrewd. He treated Britannia and that Celtic tribe as nothing more than a dairy cow. Once he had milked enough profit and accumulated sufficient merit to enter the Pantheon, receive divine baptism, and obtain [Imperial Privilege], he promptly sold the drained Celtic tribe as a package deal to the Claudius family, one of the Six Great Clans.
Claudius I, likewise waiting for an audience with the divine ancestor Romulus in hopes of receiving [Imperial Privilege], naturally regarded the increasingly weakened Britannia as prime ground for farming achievements.
Thus the ambitious Claudius I spared no expense, levying an army of forty thousand and forming the Seventh Legion to invade Britannia.
Taking advantage of the internal conflicts among the Celtic tribes, he adopted a strategy of division and gradual erosion. After decades of infiltration and encroachment, he annexed numerous ancient Celtic tribes, seized vast swaths of land, expanded what became the Seventh Province, and successfully underwent baptism, gaining the blessing of [Imperial Privilege].
But not long after, Claudius I died under mysterious circumstances, and the plan to fully devour Britannia was temporarily shelved.
Around the same time, the Celtic king who had lived in constant anxiety also succumbed to illness.
In order to let his people cling to survival a little longer, the dying king divided his territory in two. Half he left to his two daughters and his wife, Boudica. The other half he intended to use to repay the debts owed to the Claudius family.
But that bone-picking predator Caesar had quietly attached exorbitant interest to those so-called aid loans…
During the period of exploitation, the Romans imposed harsh rule over Britannia, draining Celtic wealth through crushing taxes and usury. Many were driven into bankruptcy and sold themselves into slavery. The population steadily dwindled.
With Claudius I's additional rounds of squeezing and plundering, the Celtic tribes were left poorer than ghosts.
At this point, even a rat would shed tears at the sight of Celtic soil. Forget handing over half their land to repay debts. Even if they bundled up their entire territory and population, it still might not be enough.
So bankrupt Britannia was bound by a single contract and the threat of the Seventh Legion, reduced to the private property of the Claudius family.
After Claudius I's death, Nero's visit was nominally to collect debts and take over the family's property and honor. In truth, it was to enter the Pantheon and accumulate merit.
Driven to desperation, the Celts, under Queen Boudica and her two princesses, chose to kidnap the creditor in an attempt to void the contract.
But by a twist of fate, both sides ran into Attila's Hunnic wolf riders and were forced to join hands.
And to be fair, a certain scummy snake bore part of the blame for the Celts' current plight.
Back when he fought God, he scattered the First Cause of spacetime authority across different World Eggs, causing separate civilizational regions to connect in chaotic ways. The Age of Gods never fully receded as it should have.
That was why strange sights emerged: Pharaoh Ramesses II repeatedly reincarnating, Cyrus the Great of Persia ascending to godhood, multiple Roman emperors competing simultaneously within the Pantheon, Attila the Scourge of God ravaging Europe, and Queen Boudica saving her sworn enemy, the tyrant Nero…
Even so, regarding the Celts, even if Samael had never intervened, Boudica and her two daughters might not have ended up any better.
In the course of actual history, the local governor Decianus attempted to absorb all Celtic lands into Rome.
Queen Boudica refused Rome's unreasonable demands. In retaliation, Decianus had her arrested and flogged, ordered her two daughters violated, plundered the property of the tribal nobility, and shipped many off to Rome to be sold as slaves.
Humiliated beyond endurance, Boudica eventually rallied the oppressed Celts and launched a fierce uprising against the Roman Empire. After her defeat, she took her own life.
At that time, the ruler of Rome was the grown tyrant Nero.
Now, the distortion of the world had prevented those events from unfolding as history recorded them. And yet it had also brought an indirect culprit face-to-face with these two future enemies.
Under the twisting of the First Cause, fate had become something strangely intricate indeed.