I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 118: The Unstoppable Force

The news of the mutiny of the Legio V Macedonica fell upon the war council in Rome like a slab of ice. The triumphant mood that had filled the city for weeks evaporated in an instant, replaced by a cold, stomach-churning fear. A rogue legion, battle-hardened and filled with a righteous fury, was a dagger aimed at the throat of the Empire. But this was worse. This was a poisoned dagger.

"Traitors and plague-carriers," General Aetius, the Praetorian Prefect, declared, his voice a low, brutal growl. He slammed a gauntleted fist down on the map of Italy, right on the legion's last known position. His face was flushed with the simple, absolute certainty of a military man facing a clear-cut threat. "There is only one solution. We dispatch the Legio II Italica and the Legio III Italica from their garrisons in the north. We form a blocking position here, on the Via Flaminia, before they can cross the Apennines. We will meet them, and we will destroy them to a man. It is a grim necessity, but the security of the state demands it."

The other generals in the room nodded in grim, immediate agreement. It was the only logical Roman solution. A mutiny was a cancer. You did not reason with it; you cut it out, swiftly and without mercy. The fact that the legion was infected only added to the urgency. Annihilation was not just a punishment; it was a form of brutal sanitation.

Alex, however, felt a wave of absolute horror at the suggestion. He saw not a military solution, but a biological catastrophe. He turned to Lyra, his thoughts a frantic, silent query. Model it, Lyra. A battle between three legions. Twenty thousand men.

The analysis that flowed into his mind was a vision from hell. A pitched battle would result in a biohazard event of catastrophic proportions, Lyra's voice stated in his ear, her clinical tone making the horror even more stark. The high-stress, close-quarters nature of legionary combat would ensure a 100% infection rate among all combatants. The aerosolization of blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids would turn the battlefield into an atmospheric contagion zone. The thousands of unburied, infected corpses, both Roman and mutineer, would poison the soil and the water table. Scavenging animals and birds would become vectors, spreading the plague across the Italian countryside in a pattern that would be impossible to contain. A military victory would guarantee a biological defeat. It would turn the heartland of Italy into a plague pit from which it would not recover for a generation.

"No."

The word was quiet, but it was spoken with such absolute, final authority that it silenced the entire council. Alex stood up, his face pale but his eyes burning with an intensity that made the veteran generals recoil.

"You will not fight them," he commanded. The generals stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

"You will treat them not as an enemy army," Alex continued, his voice low and dangerous, "but as a wounded, rabid beast. A thing to be contained, not confronted. You will shadow them. You will move parallel to their line of march. You will destroy every bridge and burn every granary in their path. You will slow them down. You will starve them out. You will harry their flanks with cavalry and deny them forage. But you will not, under any circumstances, engage them in open battle. I forbid it. Not a single drop of their infected blood is to be spilled on Italian soil."

The command was so counter-intuitive, so contrary to every tenet of Roman military doctrine, that it was met with stunned silence.

"Caesar," Aetius finally managed to say, his voice strained with disbelief. "You would let a rogue legion, an army of traitors, march through the heart of Italy unopposed? The humiliation... the signal it would send to the other legions... it would be a catastrophic show of weakness!"

"Weakness?" Alex's voice was a lash. "Is it weakness to refuse to set your own house on fire? Is it weakness to choose a difficult, patient path that saves millions of lives over a simple, glorious battle that will doom us all? I have told you this is a ghost sickness, a divine curse! Do you think for a moment that your swords can kill a plague? Engaging them is what the angry gods want us to do! It is how their curse will spread!" He was using their own superstition against them, the only argument they could possibly understand.

He looked at the stubborn, angry faces of his generals. He saw that logic, even their own flawed, supernatural logic, was not enough. He would have to use the full, brutal weight of his authority.

"My orders are not a suggestion for debate, General," he said, his voice dropping to an icy whisper. "They are the will of the Emperor. Disobey them, and I will have you arrested for treason and thrown from the Tarpeian Rock myself. Now, go. Give the orders."

The generals, cowed by his sudden, absolute fury, bowed stiffly and departed, their minds reeling. Alex was left alone with the map, and the terrible knowledge of the tragedy that was now marching inexorably towards his city. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

The narrative shifted, leaving the marble halls of the palace for the dusty, desperate reality of the road. With the Legio V Macedonica, all was fury and grief. The centurion Titus Pullo, a good, steady officer who had served for fifteen loyal years, felt like a man trapped in a waking nightmare. He stood by a sputtering campfire, the air thick with the smell of sickness and the low, constant moaning of the afflicted.

He remembered the quarantine. At first, it had been an inconvenience. Then, as the fever swept through their ranks, it had become terrifying. They had watched their friends, men with whom they had stormed the walls of Ctesiphon, die in agony, their bodies covered in weeping sores. They had felt abandoned, cursed, imprisoned by the very Emperor they had just won an empire for. Their legate, a stern but fair man, had tried to maintain discipline, but his pleas for patience had fallen on deaf ears.

The breaking point had come with the news, delivered by a terrified local merchant, that the Emperor was celebrating a grand Triumph in Rome. The thought of Alex feasting and parading while they rotted in a plague-ridden camp had shattered the legion's discipline. A charismatic, wild-eyed Tribune named Aquila had seized the moment. He was a man who had always nursed a grievance against the high command, and he fanned the flames of the men's fear and anger into a raging inferno. He preached a gospel of betrayal and vengeance. The Emperor was not a hero, Aquila had screamed, but a dark sorcerer who had used them for his victory and then cast them aside with a curse.

The mutiny had been a bloody, chaotic affair. The legate and the few officers who remained loyal had been cut down. Now, Aquila was their leader, and he was leading them on a march for 'justice.'

Titus Pullo did not trust Aquila, but he was bound by the new, desperate reality of his legion. They were brothers in suffering, and their only hope, they believed, was to march on Rome and force the Emperor to hear their plea, to grant them a cure for the curse he had laid upon them. They were not monsters. They were terrified, grieving, and sick men, and that was what made them so profoundly dangerous.

Their march was a grim procession. They found the roads ahead of them strangely empty, the villages abandoned. When they reached the great supply depot at Ariminum, their hopes for food and rest were dashed. The garrison was gone. The great granaries, which should have been overflowing with grain, were smoldering, burned-out shells. The Emperor's hand was everywhere, denying them succor, treating them like vermin to be starved out.

The men's desperation turned to a new, harder rage. But in the depot's armory, they found something the retreating garrison had not had time to destroy. Stacks of artillery. Catapults, ballistae, and heaps of ammunition.

That night, the Tribune Aquila climbed atop a siege stone, his eyes blazing with a mad, prophetic fire in the torchlight.

"Brothers! The Tyrant on the Palatine denies us our bread!" he roared, his voice hoarse with passion. "He seeks to starve us out like rats in a trap! He believes we will wither and die on the road! He is wrong!"

He gestured to the catapults, the dark, menacing shapes of the war machines behind him. "If he will not give us bread, then we will feast on the stones of Rome itself! We marched to Ctesiphon for his glory. Now we will march on Rome for our own justice! We are no longer petitioners begging for a cure! We are a siege army! We are the righteous plague that will cleanse the rot from the heart of the Empire!"

A great, ragged cheer went up from the thousands of sick and starving soldiers. Titus Pullo watched, his heart heavy with dread. They had crossed a new line. They were no longer a mutinous legion seeking redress. They had become an army of the damned, and they were bringing hell with them, aimed directly at the gates of the eternal city.