"Pff, pff, pff, pff!"
At the same time, the dull sound of cloth tearing echoed one after another among the white-robed priests. More than a dozen "priests," old and young, male and female, tall, short, fat, and thin, suddenly burst into motion. Gleaming daggers flashed up and down, scattering a sheet of cold, deadly light.
In only a few moments, they fell upon the nearby unsuspecting and physically frail priests like tigers among sheep. Nearly a hundred of their colleagues had their throats slit, their necks cut open, and then were efficiently stabbed again and again in the heart and lungs to make sure they were dead.
For a moment, the Pantheon rang with a mix of screams and heavy, muffled thuds. Blood mist mixed with bits of flesh and organs sprayed in every direction. The dying priests convulsed weakly on the ground, their pupils spreading as they could only watch their lives ebb away little by little.
"Assassins! Assassins have infiltrated! Guards, guards!"
The few surviving high-ranking priests fled in panic toward the main doors. The squad of soldiers rushing over at the commotion gave the spellcasters a glimmer of hope for survival.
Seeing the gate so close, the survivors felt a brief measure of relief. But when they turned back and looked at the murderers, youths, adults, even elderly figures, coldly delivering finishing blows in the sea of blood they had created, their faces turned deathly pale.
Those faces were calm to the point of cruelty.
And the more one looked at them, the more their features seemed shrouded in mist, somehow both familiar and unfamiliar at once, as though they resembled many faces from memory without truly matching any of them.
The Pantheon was under tight guard. How could so many assassins possibly have slipped in all at once?
"Pff, pff!"
Just as the survivors passed the arriving guards, still full of confusion, blades stabbed into their bellies. The agony of torn organs made them whip around in shock. Reflected in their sharply contracting pupils were the same familiar-yet-strange calm faces.
"The Assassin... Order?
May I ask... which one of the Old Men of the Mountain... has come?"
The dying old priest raised a blood-covered hand to look at it, then leaned against the wall and slowly slid down, powerless. Blood frothed from his mouth as he stared wide-eyed in unwilling rage and rasped out his question.
The Assassin Order, based in the Vulture's Nest, served under Cyrus the Great and specialized in carrying out assassinations.
Rome's repeated setbacks in its war against Persia had often come because many officers were assassinated by operatives from the Assassin Order, throwing their forces into chaos.
And to infiltrate the Pantheon without a sound was beyond the ability of any ordinary assassin. Probably only the successive leaders of the Assassin Order, those who bore the title [Old Man of the Mountain], possessed that sort of ability.
"Old Man of the Mountain" was also known as Hassan.
"I am one, I am a hundred. We are the many and the one, the one and the many, a thousand-changing host of shadows that possess a hundred faces..."
Nearly a hundred men, women, young, and old all spoke in a cold, low murmur. Their bodies gradually blurred, gathering toward the purple-haired "priestess" in white robes at the center like shadows painted in thick black ink.
"My name... is Hundred Faces... Rest now..."
A breeze drifted past.
A slender hand seized the old man's throat and twisted with a crack. His aged body dropped heavily to the ground, revealing behind him a Magecraft array drawn in blood, only one final stroke short of completion.
Hum...
At that moment, deprived of the priests' magical power and the divine words sustaining it, the crown-shaped ring immediately dimmed and went out. In echo with the divine tree, the radiant dome covering Rome began visibly fading and collapsing from top to bottom.
With this sudden upheaval, Romulus could no longer divide his attention. The emerald thorns that had been gathering in the sky through the Spear of Nation-Building and Rome's earthly veins shattered as well.
Pff!
Under the violent backlash of magical power, the Divine Ancestor's body swayed. His face turned pale, and a thread of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. The Ether currents around him shook violently, and even the great verdant tree with its hanging branches let out a rustling cry, as though mourning, through the trembling of its leaves.
"O Mithras, radiant lord of the sun, father of all flame, most praised one! To conquer the enemies of this world, grant the strongest among god-men a thousand blades of light!"
Cyrus activated the inscription on the golden sword in his hand. As he swept it in a circular arc, a golden ring like a sun hung high in the sky. From it, golden swords condensed and split apart into form, then fell at his command in a dense rain.
Romulus, who was maintaining the innate barrier atop the great altar, bore the brunt of the assault.
"Protect His Majesty!"
Streams of light flashed.
Four Roman emperors wearing laurel crowns and carrying swords, shields, spears, and lances arrived with the imperial guard. Along the way, they gathered Roman soldiers who had spontaneously rallied and charged forward with furious shouts.
The four invoked Imperial Privilege, raising morale and drawing the entire army into their momentum. Through it, they manifested the authority of Mars, and a surging tide of blood-red light rolled forward, their auras echoing one another from afar.
Shhk, shhk, shhk, shhk!
Suddenly, a strange tremor ran through the ground. The stone floor split apart, and a sweeping cloud of windblown sand crashed into the reinforcements. Amid sharp whistling sounds, short blades shot in from wicked angles and pierced the throats and hearts of several Roman soldiers in the front line.
"Those filthy rats from the Vulture's Nest have slipped in! Advance in defensive formation!"
Several centurions who reacted on instinct immediately raised their shields and called for the chaotic formation to regroup.
But it was already too late.
Within the sandstorm sweeping across the open ground, several figures flickered and darted with agile, erratic movements.
Pff, pff!
Fine needles as thin as ox hair were blown through tubes, spiraling faster and faster with enough force to pierce stone and metal. In an instant, seven or eight Roman soldiers on the left were struck.
A moment later, the soldiers, as though bitten by insects, turned bluish purple in the face, convulsed, and collapsed to the ground, dead from poison.
Crack!
Several soldiers on the right froze in place like puppets on strings. Their heads twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees, and white vertebrae burst through skin as blood sprayed wildly.
"Imperial Privilege: Purify the Filth!"
"Imperial Privilege: Protect the Weak!"
Two Roman emperors immediately planted their swords with both hands. As the blades turned, divine power spread outward in flowing silver and gold halos.
Clumps of foul-smelling black mist like fungal threads rose from the necks of everyone's shadows. As they dissipated, they let out squeals like rats. Bathed in golden light, the soldiers' blood surged hot, and Ether gathered around them severalfold.
Slash!
At that very moment, an arm soft and flexible as a strip of black cloth extended from an impossible angle, slipped through a gap, and the twisted five fingers lightly touched the chest of one Roman emperor.
The moment that strange black arm silently withdrew, the phantom image of a beating heart condensed in the palm of a figure hidden in the storm.
Pff!
As the tall figure clenched his fingers shut, the dark red heart, its veins clearly visible, burst apart.
The Roman emperor at the center of the formation spat out a spray of blood and fell flat on his back.
"Watch the shadows! Tighten the gaps between the shields!"
Two imperial guards hurriedly caught the gravely wounded emperor, whose chest still pulsed with a cluster of golden light even as he coughed blood and shouted his warning.
"Roar! Roar, roar!"
The centurions, who loathed these assassins to the bone, looked around with dark expressions, as though ready to tear someone apart on sight.
At that moment, the blood-red light covering the formation boiled violently. The gathering phantom above it let out a roar like thunderous war drums, instantly blowing away the surrounding sandstorm.
Three assassins in black cloaks and white bone masks were forced to reveal themselves.
Zhen Guan Hassan. Shadow-Peeling Hassan. Cursed Arm Hassan.
Three Old Men of the Mountain.
So we've finally caught you rats from the Vulture's Nest!
A rain of arrows and spell bullets as dense as locusts crashed down upon the three exposed assassins.
At the same time, whistling signal arrows shot into the sky and horns sounded along the line. The Roman legions stationed throughout the City of Seven Hills received the signal and began madly converging on central Palatine Hill.
Smoke-Befuddling, Mist-Drunken, Realm of Oblivion!
Yet with a passing breeze, dense fog suddenly rose. The mist carried a faint scent of wine and dragged the three Hassans back into obscurity once more.
Smoke-Drunken Hassan, the fourth Old Man of the Mountain.
Hearing the repeated sounds of arrows striking empty air around them, the centurions' expressions turned grim.
The remaining three Roman emperors furiously raised their greatswords, lightly wiped the inscriptions along their blades, invoked divine power, and spun their slashes through the surrounding fog.
But at that same moment, several presences suddenly erupted from within the mist, and torrents of Ether came sweeping in from all directions.