Chapter 236: Altera Joins the Fray!
Nero's kiss, much like the Emperor herself, was a blazing inferno of passion—a physical manifestation of emotions accumulated over two thousand years of solitude and longing.
It was an affection so profound, so heavy with history, that Rowe found it impossible to refuse.
He was never one to be timid, nor was he the type to shy away from genuine emotion. No matter the circumstances, Nero was someone he had personally guided, a star he had helped ignite. To deny her now would be to deny his own legacy.
Of course, in reality, Nero would not have allowed him to refuse regardless.
The Roman Emperor's Skill, Imperial Privilege, had already been displayed to its absolute limit. If she declared that this moment belonged to her, then the very laws of the world would bend to make it so.
Lips and tongues intertwined, hot and desperate, bridging the gap between Master and Servant, between the past and the present. Their soft bodies pressed intimately against one another, heat radiating through the layers of fabric.
Within the Reality Marble, Aestus Domus Aurea, the spotlight focused solely on the center of the stage.
Then, the heavy crimson curtains fell, blocking the view from any nonexistent audience. Beneath the dim lights of the Golden Theater, only two blurry silhouettes could be faintly seen, merging into one as the world outside ceased to exist.
Atalanta snapped back to herself.
In a single motion, she drew and aimed at the stage, the veiled center of the darkened theater.
"Rowe is my prey!"
A sharp glint flashed in the young huntress's yellow green beast eyes. She bared her fangs as she ground her teeth.
"Do not waste your strength." Artoria's voice was calm, almost cold. She raised a hand and stopped Atalanta's next movement. "Neither you nor I can break this."
"This is the power of civilization."
Rome had once wrapped western human history like a mantle. Now it had become the true source of western civilization itself.
Even if Rome had inherited countless things from Greece, on the tree of Human Order that sprouted from the Sea of Stars, Greece stood lower.
Whether as a civilization, or as the origin that defined a civilization, Greece was still behind Rome.
And Camelot, which was born from Rome's shadow, was even further behind.
So when the ritual inside the Reality Marble reached its peak, both Artoria and Atalanta could only watch.
They could only watch the two silhouettes entangled on the stage.
Rowe's first time.
Atalanta's grip tightened until the bow creaked.
Artoria smiled, as if she were watching a foregone conclusion.
"Do not panic. Someone will deal with her."
Someone could deal with that Roman Emperor.
The Knight King could feel it. She knew the person was already approaching.
And drawing a sword.
Atalanta's ears twitched. Her gaze snapped upward.
Above the dim Roman theater, above the Reality Marble itself, a gust of wind suddenly appeared.
A wind from the outside.
A wind that should not exist in this sealed world.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The sound came next, like glass splintering.
A thin seam of light opened, then widened, and within it a sharp edge descended.
A sword.
Three colors braided into one, roaring down like a verdict, striking straight toward the stage hidden behind curtains.
"Who is that?"
Then the answer landed with the blade.
"Altera, the conqueror who destroyed the Roman Empire."
The Scourge of God who had shattered Rome's civilization was the one existence suited to confronting a Reality Marble condensed from Rome's spirit.
A counter to civilization.
A special attack aimed at Rome itself.
On the stage, the two figures froze.
Nero, who had been moving with a dancer's certainty, separated from Rowe and looked up.
The invisible threads snapped. Rowe exhaled.
He did not know whether to feel relief, or something dangerously close to regret.
"Hm? An interruption?" Nero's lips curved as if she were amused by the audacity. "It does not matter."
"Rowe is mine. Always."
In the next instant, her bare form was covered again by a long dress like a red rose blooming in firelight.
A sword appeared in her hand.
A crimson blade, bright as embers.
Its name was Primordial Flame.
The treasured sword of the Roman Emperor, forged from the concept of the spark of self that He gave to Rome.
That spark, which bloomed at the beginning of the Common Era.
Rowe's spark.
At the same moment, the curtains shattered. Sword light pierced in from outside.
Blade met blade.
The red light within Altera's Sword of the War God surged and flooded the air, colliding with Primordial Flame's burning radiance.
Wind pressure exploded from the clash, tearing the remaining curtains on all four sides of the stage to rags.
Light returned.
The stage was revealed.
"Now."
Artoria moved.
Her feet struck the carpet, and she lunged straight toward Rowe.
"Dream on." Atalanta plucked her bowstring.
The arrow's light flashed and cut across the space between them, blocking Artoria's line.
Their earlier cooperation had only existed because Rowe had been taken.
Atalanta and the Knight King were rivals from the beginning.
Enemies by instinct, even if they temporarily shared a target.
In raw capability, Atalanta should not have been able to stop her for long. The successor of the Wild Hunt, Artoria Pendragon, at her peak was not inferior to a regional chief god.
But Atalanta did not stand alone.
The Moon Goddess stood behind her.
The Moon's image surfaced along the arrow's glow, and power surged from it like a cold tide.
While they moved, Nero's red skirt fluttered in the wind of her collapsing theater. She looked at the newcomer and smiled.
"It is you."
"Are you here to contend with me for my Adjutant as well?"
Sun kissed skin. A white veil. Pale short hair snapping in the air.
Altera posture was that of a warrior, sharp and direct, like the Hunnic leader who had trampled Europe.
Fighting for the sake of fighting.
In her eyes there was only conquest.
"O destroyer of Rome." Nero's voice was not angry. It was strangely gentle. "I have long known this battle was inevitable."
Rome had always been destined to fall. Empires do not last forever.
Only the spark of civilization endures.
Rome in Altera's era was already decaying, corrupted from within.
This girl who seemed to destroy was, in truth, lighting a fire beneath rotten timber, letting something new burn brighter.
So she was not Rome's enemy.
But she was Nero's enemy now.
"Only Rowe," Nero said softly, her smile turning fervent, "I will not yield him to you."
Primordial Flame lifted like a promise.
Altera said nothing.
She only tightened her grip on the Sword of the War God.
Then she looked past Nero.
Toward Rowe.
Their eyes met.
Rowe froze.
Then he stared back, unblinking.
He was not surprised to see Altera.
And alongside that lack of surprise, an unsettling joy rose in him.
Altera was different from the others.
Star Hunter. Sefar.
She and he had been true enemies, foes who had fought for life and death on the Moon.
Rowe, who had watched the planet's memory and Human Order's archives granted by Gaia and Alaya, knew it clearly.
Altera, after becoming the King of the Huns, might have developed a longing for God, for a Lord, for a shadow that remained in Rome.
But she had always been hostile to him.
Hostile to Rowe.
And yet, the look in Altera's eyes now felt wrong.
It was more than hostility.
"Bad guy."
The words rang in Rowe's ear, similar to what he had heard long ago, yet not the same.
This Altera was different from the pure Star Hunter, the giant that existed only to erase civilizations.
She had already become human.
And as her voice echoed, light and shadow twisted before Rowe's eyes and spread outward.
In an instant, he was pulled into another world.
Another layer.
A space of consciousness.
A spiritual domain unfolded by the mechanism called self, the Star Hunter's internal structure that Rowe had once taken in reverse.
Because Altera had appeared.
Because the mechanism reacted to him.
Because it was spiritual, Nero, Artoria, and Atalanta did not sense it.
Because it was the Star Hunter's self mechanism, only Altera could control it.
The world before him was pale and desolate.
Almost empty.
Only one figure stood there, facing him.
"Sefar."
Rowe's expression looked solemn.
Inside, he was almost laughing.
Yes.
This was the correct direction.
If you kill me in a spiritual domain like this, my death will carry back into the physical world. A clean solution.
His robe stirred in a wind that did not exist. Rowe slowly raised a hand.
Altera did not advance.
She stood still.
Her crimson gold eyes reflected him.
She spoke, clear and serious.
"Altera."
Rowe paused.
"What?"
"My name now is Altera." Her tone did not allow negotiation. "Not Sefar."
Rowe stared.
Then, after a long breath, he forced words through his throat.
"That is not the point."
"It is the point."
"People change." Altera's face remained composed, almost stubborn. "The me now is not the me then."
Rowe almost said, you are not human.
Then he stopped.
As if he had remembered something he should have known all along.
He smiled.
"Fine. People change."
Then his eyes sharpened.
"But positions do not."
"You want to reclaim your self mechanism, do you not? Sefar is your origin. If you cannot retrieve what you lost, you will never be free, and you will never complete your mission as a Star Hunter."
"And if you kill me, you die too."
"That," Altera said, indifferent, "does not matter."
She lifted the Sword of the War God.
"You are the Lord, are you not?"
"I am," Rowe answered, then corrected himself before the sentence could settle into a lie, "and I am not."
He shook his head.
He understood her later yearning for the Lord too well to accept the title outright. But denying it entirely was pointless.
So he chose the only honest option.
Ambiguity.
"The Lord is the self in everyone's heart."
"Everyone is their own Lord. That is what I have advocated for a long time."
"No one can be another person's Lord."
"The Lord you speak of should be yourself."
"Is that so."
"Yes."
Altera's gaze did not soften.
"But I do not think so."
Rowe blinked.
A clean, perfect question mark appeared on his face.
Altera took a slow breath, as if weighing words that were too heavy for a simple tongue.
"To be your own Lord is very difficult."
"I have met many people like that."
Her eyes drifted upward, searching time.
"A long time ago. Hundreds of thousands of days and nights, perhaps."
She leaned on her sword with one hand and began counting on her fingers with the other, trying seriously, then giving up when she ran out of fingers.
It was absurdly earnest.
Almost foolish.
"Fearless in death. Challenging authority. Fighting against many."
She looked up again, and her crimson gold eyes held a strange gentleness.
"I met many, many such people."
"I asked if they were afraid."
"They said they were."
"But someone taught them to be their own Lord."
"So they, with their Lord, overcame fear and gained the courage to draw their swords, and to draw out their self."
Her voice lowered.
"I did not understand."
"Even after I created many things without meaning to, I still did not understand."
"But now I do."
"Being your own Lord sounds simple. The simpler something is, the more difficult it becomes."
"Only when you have support inside you, only when your heart contains humanity, can you do it."
"To be your own Lord, you need others to support you while you choose."
Rowe's smile thinned.
He understood the core of what she was saying.
Her heart.
The mechanism is called self.
In a sense, Altera's heart had long been tangled with him.
That was why, in her later years, she yearned for the Lord and for the shadow Rowe left behind in Rome.
Altera's eyes sharpened again.
"Someone told me people change."
"Someone told me enemies are not always enemies."
"But when I see you, I still believe we are enemies."
Rowe's hand rose slightly.
"And so you came here to kill me."
"No."
Altera's answer came immediately, cutting him off.
"I will not kill you."
Rowe's brows lifted, despite himself.
"Why."
Altera's grip tightened on her sword, and she raised it.
Her voice softened, not for him, but for herself.
"Because I have decided to imprison you in my heart."
Rowe's expression turned blank.
Not because he did not understand.
Because he understood too quickly.
She was afraid of reclaiming her self mechanism.
Afraid of becoming the old giant again, the thing that existed only to destroy civilization.
Yet she had no choice but to take it back.
So she found a solution that was almost monstrous in its simplicity.
Take back the mechanism.
And take him with it.
Put her heart with him.
Keep him by her side.
In a world of pale destruction, where nothing lived, she could make life bloom, as long as she chained her heart to a single anchor.
"You cannot escape," Altera said.
"Because you have been in my heart from beginning to end."
"Rowe."
The world of consciousness collapsed.
To the outside, only a moment passed.
Primordial Flame still burned.
Then Altera vanished.
And Rowe vanished with her.
Altera reclaimed her self mechanism.
Along with Rowe.
Nero's eyes widened.
Artoria and Atalanta froze at the same time.
Laus Saint Claudius dissolved into light and scattered away.
On the bank of the Matsuensawa River, night bled into dawn, and a faint glow rose along the horizon.
"Damn it," Atalanta hissed through her teeth. "Taken again?"
Artoria silently lowered her Spear and looked toward the Rose Emperor.
Nero Claudius stood without moving, her expression unreadable.
.....
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