Chapter 219: Crimson Moon, Brunestud
The moon was unusually beautiful tonight.
Moonlight spilled over the summit of the Ural Mountains, turning the snow into a sheet of liquid silver. From a distance it almost looked like flowing hair, luminous and cold.
The Roman camp was quiet.
After the long expedition and the long march, after finally reaching what would one day be called Europa's border, the army of more than a dozen full legions had changed shape.
It was no longer only Rome.
Germanic youths, Celtic youths, and countless young men taken from tribes that once stood on the other side of the spear now wore Roman armor. At the beginning there had been chaos, exclusion, friction, the inevitable crowding of bodies and pride.
Then battle followed battle.
And a different cohesion was forged.
Even if they had once been enemies, that had only been a matter of position. Now they shared rations, patrol routes, watch fires, and the same thin line between sleep and death. Prejudice did not vanish because someone gave a speech. It vanished because the man beside you dragged you out of the mud when you were bleeding.
"Fighting side by side is the fastest way to erase barriers and make something like friendship possible."
Inside the main tent, Rowe looked through the window at the scattered lights of the camp. His tone was calm, almost pleased.
"When you have lived and died together, most things stop mattering."
It was one of the reasons he dared to take the young men from conquered tribes into his army without fearing a mutiny.
By the end, the number of Romans was smaller than the number of those barbarians.
Yet as long as that bond existed, the foundation of the army remained. And it would keep growing.
They had reached Europa's edge, but Rowe had no intention of stopping his conquest here.
"So your earlier doubt was wrong," Rowe said, turning his gaze toward the girl beside him. "I won again, Miss Third Magician."
"Hm?"
Under the moonlight, the human form of Athena tilted her head. Silver hair slid down her shoulder, and her crimson eyes narrowed with quiet amusement.
"Then, Mister Sage. No. Your Excellency, Rome's Adjutant, what reward do you want?"
Einzbern rose slowly. The movement was unhurried, elegant, as if she were standing up in a palace rather than a tent at the edge of the world. White silk covered her legs beneath her flowing skirt, making the gesture look almost unfairly composed.
"I do not need a reward," Rowe said, spreading his hands. "I already have the best one."
Einzbern stepped closer.
"And that is?"
"You."
Einzbern brushed a strand of silver hair aside and sighed, as if resigned.
"I truly do not know where you learned lines like that."
Rowe smiled.
"But they work."
Einzbern did not deny it.
"They do. I am moved."
She looked at him, eyes bright in the moonlight.
"Anything you say moves me."
Rowe's eyelid twitched.
They were playing straight ball now. No feints, no clever traps, no distant irony. A goddess of wisdom enjoyed contests of language because language was a battlefield where intent could not hide.
For Einzbern, this was pleasure.
For Rowe, it was not unpleasant either.
Enticing hearts, without drawing blood.
Einzbern leaned forward a little, hands clasped behind her back, face lowered, looking up at him.
It was hard not to think she was trying to be cute.
Rowe coughed softly.
"What is it?"
"Nothing." Einzbern's lips curved. "I was simply thinking. What position would be best tonight?"
That was straight. Too straight.
Rowe's expression did not change.
"Hm. The last one felt good, but I thought of a new one."
Einzbern tilted her head.
"So it is not easy to beat you."
Rowe smiled.
"When it comes to shamelessness, no one beats me."
Einzbern opened her mouth to respond.
Then a light knock sounded at the tent door.
The sound hesitated, as if the person outside had already regretted it mid knock.
Rowe's gaze sharpened at once.
"It is Melusine."
Einzbern blinked.
"The quiet little girl?"
"She is older than you," Rowe said, already turning toward the entrance.
He raised his voice.
"Melusine, is something wrong?"
A pause.
Then the voice outside, faint and restrained, with the slightest tremor under the control.
"Um. You are not asleep yet?"
There was surprise there. And relief.
Melusine knew Rowe maintained a human routine despite the power he carried. By now he should have been asleep. That fact seemed to make her request feel more dangerous, as if she were stealing time from him.
"Not yet," Rowe said. "What is it?"
"Can you come out for a moment?" Melusine hesitated. "Just for a little while."
Rowe glanced back at Einzbern.
"I will go see. Melusine came out with me, after all."
Einzbern nodded once. Rowe had already explained Melusine's origin to her. The Third Magician was not ignorant.
The wooden door opened with a soft creak.
Moonlight spilled in.
A figure stood outside, straight backed, hands held close to her sides as if unsure where they belonged.
"My Lord."
Rowe stepped out.
"Melusine. What is wrong?"
"Uh… mm."
She spoke softly, then stopped.
She had come with a thousand words.
Now that she was here, those words refused to become sound.
Rowe did not hurry her. He simply looked at her.
The girl who had been born from the remnants of Britannia's Albion stood under the moon. Silver white hair swayed behind her, reaching her hips. Two black rhomboid crystals on her forehead, like dragon horns, gave off a faint glow that made her delicate face look even more unreal.
She was not wearing her machina armor. It had been withdrawn into the massive gauntlets on her hands, gauntlets that looked like shields even at rest. She wore a white and blue dress. Her shoulders were slender, skin pale beneath the cold light. The fabric wrapped her chest and waist with careful restraint, and the skirt flared lightly around her hips. White silk gathered her legs, tracing their line without shame.
Compared to her armored form, she looked far more like a girl next door.
If one ignored the gauntlets.
"Let us talk while we walk," Rowe said, waving his hand as if that could make the tension lighter.
He looked her over once and spoke plainly.
"Very cute."
Melusine froze.
"Cu… cute?"
"This dress was given to me by Boudica," she said quickly, as if defending herself against a crime she could not name. "She said it was what she wore when she was young."
"Boudica," Rowe repeated, genuinely surprised. His first impression of her had always been that resolute warrior from Britannia, a woman shaped by resolve and bitter wind.
"Yes." Melusine breathed out and lifted her face slightly. "Boudica said if I wear this, people will be less afraid. I accepted, because I do not want to be feared either."
"Being feared because of strength," she continued, quieter, "I do not like it."
Rowe walked ahead, his voice carried by the wind back to her.
"Why? Is it not natural for the weak to fear the strong?"
"It is natural," Melusine said. "But I do not like it."
She tilted her head, then began speaking as if the words were waiting behind a door that had finally opened.
"Because I was originally something discarded."
"I was formed from one hand of Albion's remains. The world's primordial dragon. I am the continuation of Albion."
Her eyes did not leave the moonlit ground.
"So I can feel Albion's loneliness before death. I can feel the suffocating sensation of being abandoned by the world."
Loneliness. Solitude.
Those were the feelings of the primordial world dragon before its end.
A creature born near the beginning of the world, crossing mythic eras and endless years, and dying in a silence that did not even have the dignity of witness.
Because a generation of gods had faded.
Because peer after peer disappeared.
"In the memory I inherited," Melusine said, "I participated in a war millions of years ago. Alongside many primordial gods. Against an Atlantis civilization that came from beyond the heavens."
Her voice tightened.
"That war was brutal. Countless god cores were shattered and fell into the present world. Countless Authorities were broken."
"And I was severely injured."
Rowe listened without interrupting. He knew what she meant. The clash between gods and the machine gods that descended from the sky. For Earth, a catastrophe second only to the Star Hunter. For Albion, it had been a bright memory.
Because in that war, it met companions.
Before that, it was alone in its region.
That war gave it the first true opportunity to touch the outside world, to communicate, to desire communication.
It was joyful.
Then the seeds of disaster sprouted.
One by one, heavily injured gods were betrayed by their own systems. They were sealed, or exiled to the Imaginary Number Space beyond the present world.
Albion lost its companions.
It fell back into solitude.
No one to speak to.
No one to confess to.
As the old era faded and a new mythology dawned, the world grew unfamiliar. Albion chose to leave.
It chose Britannia, the land closest to the Sea of Stars.
It buried its colossal body deep underground and used its claws to carve a passage toward the Sea of Stars.
A passage that should not have existed.
A goal that was not even in the same dimension.
Normally, no matter how difficult, Albion could have done it.
Only…
"I still died," Melusine said, voice thin as thread. "For reasons I did not understand. I did not know the truth. I died at the moment of breaking through."
She looked up briefly, then away.
"Just before death, I could feel my power draining away. True Ether collapsing. Old wounds erupting together."
"I died underground like that."
Rowe could guess the shape of it.
Albion was buried deep. It did not know what had happened on the surface. It did not know the Age of Gods had collapsed, that True Ether had thinned, that expenditure would no longer recover as it once did.
So it did not hold back.
It dug as always.
And the last exhaustion, the last depletion that could not be restored, triggered old wounds and ended everything.
A primordial god lay buried in earth.
A tragedy so absurd it almost felt like mockery.
"And so I hate death," Melusine said. "And I hate solitude more."
She turned her eyes toward Rowe.
"I can feel that your machina god state is related to Atlantis. To other divine systems, Atlantis is a disaster. But for me, it is different."
It was Albion's first escape from loneliness.
The first place it gained something like a heart.
Rowe slowed, then leaned down and ruffled Melusine's hair.
His touch was casual, grounded, human.
"So you do not need to torture yourself with the meaning of survival," he said.
"You do not need to force an answer to why you are alive."
"As long as you can live, and as long as you do not live in solitude, is that not enough?"
Nothing in the camp could be hidden from Rowe. Of course he knew Melusine's confusion.
He simply chose not to drag her to an answer.
Let her find it through her own past.
That was the most fitting. The most complete.
"I… understand."
Melusine paused.
Then her eyes lit, faintly, as if a lamp had finally found oil.
No need to panic. No need to chase. No need to demand a meaning.
"Can I… always follow you?" she asked suddenly.
Rowe stopped, then nodded without hesitation.
"If you are willing."
Melusine's smile appeared quickly, almost too bright for her usual quietness.
"As long as I follow behind you, it will be fine."
Yes.
As long as she followed behind Rowe, she would no longer be alone.
Rowe smiled, about to speak again.
Then another voice slid into his senses like a cold blade.
"Merlin."
"Hey," Merlin's tone sounded light, but the meaning was not. "It is me, Adjutant. I need to warn you."
"The royalty on His Majesty Nero is intensifying. It is eroding its source in reverse."
"Something is changing on the Moon."
"Something up there seems to have been released."
Rowe looked up.
The Moon's surface.
An unchanging landscape. A silent satellite that only received light and reflected it like a corpse holding a mirror.
A cold, clear voice echoed there, mechanical and without mercy.
"Detecting intrusion."
"System compromised."
"Routine cleanup function failed."
"Initiating simulated confrontation mechanism."
"Requesting release of confined UO."
"Request approved."
A low hum spread across the lunar surface.
Iridescence descended and intertwined, like a cage opening.
A figure rose slowly, facing Earth.
Golden hair cascaded.
Fair skin was bared to the void.
She opened red eyes.
In the depths of her pupils, brilliant crimson light burned like a wound that refused to close.
A final announcement sounded, like a verdict.
"Releasing code name."
"The Crimson Moon Project."
"Brunestud."
.....
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