I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 182: The Sound of the Machine

Days bled into a week, each one a grey, monotonous copy of the last. Valerius had perfected his role. He was Kerr the water-hauler, a silent, reliable cog in the vast, sprawling machine of the horde. He had learned to mimic the placid emptiness of the people around him, to empty his face of thought and emotion, to move with the slow, shuffling gait of a man whose spirit had been broken. His disguise was no longer a mask he wore; it was a skin he inhabited. But beneath the placid surface, his mind was a razor, sharp and constantly working. He knew that to find the Conductor, to find the heart of this beast, he had to break from his routine. He had to move upstream.

The opportunity came during the crossing of a wide, fast-moving river. The crude ford was a chaotic bottleneck, with dozens of wagons struggling through the muddy banks and swirling currents. It was a rare moment of disorder in the otherwise unnervingly efficient horde. Valerius, with the practiced eye of a Roman soldier, saw his chance. He guided his ox-cart into a particularly deep, rocky section of the riverbed. With a sharp, expertly aimed kick to a specific spot on the axle he had already identified as weak, he produced a loud, splintering crack. The left wheel of his cart canted inward at a grotesque angle. He was stranded, a broken piece of machinery in the middle of the river.

The other drivers, their faces blank, simply guided their own carts around him. The overseers shouted uselessly from the bank. In this society of followers, no one possessed the initiative to solve an unexpected problem. Valerius played his part for a few moments, looking at the broken wheel with the same dull incomprehension as the others. Then, as if a spark of old memory had reignited, he waded into the churning water. Using a length of rope from his cart and a large rock as a lever, he single-handedly hoisted the heavy axle, forced the wheel back into a semblance of alignment, and then lashed it securely in place with the rope. It was a rough, temporary repair, but it was functional. He got the cart moving again and cleared the ford.

His competence did not go unnoticed. That evening, the gaunt, tattooed overseer of his work section—a woman he now knew was called Lyra—approached him as he tended to his oxen. She studied him for a long moment, her eyes like chips of flint.

"You are not like the others," she stated, her voice a flat, emotionless monotone. "You think. You solve. This is a rare quality."

Valerius kept his eyes downcast, feigning fear and subservience. "I... I was a wheelwright. In my old life. Before the Silence brought us peace."

The overseer nodded slowly. "Your talents are wasted hauling water. The Honored Warriors have need of their tools. Their armor must be mended, their weapons kept sharp. You will be reassigned. You will join the wagon train that carries the sacred materials of war."

Valerius felt a surge of adrenaline, a cold thrill of victory. He was moving up. He was being brought closer to the warriors, closer to the head of the great, serpentine beast.

His new position was a world away from the simple drudgery of the water-carts. He was now part of a heavily guarded convoy that traveled near the warrior encampments, hauling wagons filled with the strange, dark leather armor, bundles of obsidian-tipped spears, and crates of the crude but effective axes the silent soldiers wielded. These camps were kept separate from the main body of the horde, isolated in hidden clearings. And it was here, on the edge of the warrior caste’s world, that Valerius observed the first piece of true, undeniable, non-human strangeness.

At the center of each of these temporary camps, there was a single, smooth, black stone pylon. It was about the height of a man, seamless, and seemed to drink the very light around it. It hummed. It was not a sound he could hear with his ears, but a low, deep vibration that resonated in the bones of his skull, a constant, subliminal thrum that set his teeth on edge. At every dusk, the silent warriors would gather around their camp’s pylon. They would form concentric circles, standing motionless, their heads bowed, for a full hour. They were not praying. They were... receiving. Valerius knew, with an instinct that went deeper than logic, that these pylons were the key. They were receivers, antennae, a direct link to the mind of the Conductor. To find the source of the signal, he need only follow the pylons.

But his new, elevated position brought with it a new and far more insidious danger. His competence, his quiet efficiency, had been noticed not just by the overseers, but by another Operarius, a worker assigned to the same wagon train. His name was Ulfric, a former chieftain of a minor Germanic tribe, a big man with a wild red beard and eyes that burned with a terrifying, zealous light.

Ulfric was different. While most of the workers were hollowed-out, placid shells, Ulfric was a true believer. He had not just been conquered by the Silence; he had converted to it. He saw it as a glorious, cleansing new religion, a release from the chaotic, violent world of tribal warfare he had once known. And in Valerius, he saw a kindred spirit.

One evening, as they were unloading a crate of spearheads, Ulfric approached him, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "The Silence is strong in you, brother," he said, his burning eyes searching Valerius’s carefully blank face. "I have seen it. You do not toil like the others, with the resentment of a slave. You serve with purpose. With an inner stillness. The Masters will notice you soon. They will see that you are worthy. You could be chosen. You could be raised up, to become one of the Honored."

From that day on, Ulfric became Valerius’s shadow. He sought him out, trying to befriend him, to share the glorious tenets of his fanatical new faith. He spoke of the beauty of a world without ambition, without messy emotions, a world of perfect, silent purpose guided by the great, benevolent intelligence of the Conductor.

This was a more dangerous threat than any tattooed overseer or silent warrior. Ulfric’s constant presence, his probing questions about Valerius’s past, his attempts to draw him into theological discussions, all threatened to tear apart the fragile fabric of his "broken man" persona. A single wrong word, a flicker of an emotion other than placid acceptance, and Ulfric’s adoration could curdle into suspicion.

Valerius was forced to engage in a delicate, exhausting psychological dance. He had to feign a shared belief, nodding along to Ulfric’s mad ramblings, while simultaneously maintaining a stoic, broken silence that would hopefully bore the man into leaving him alone. He was no longer just a ghost, an invisible observer. He was an actor, forced onto a terrifying stage, playing a part in a madman’s play. His mission had become infinitely more complex, and a single missed cue could bring the entire performance crashing down around him.