I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 92: Steel Against Glass

The canyon pass was a natural killing floor, a narrow corridor of rock and shadow. At its throat stood the five sentinels of The Traveler, silent and still as statues carved from night itself. Their polished, obsidian-like armor drank the dim light, and their featureless masks betrayed no hint of life or emotion. They were an unnerving, alien presence in this ancient, earthy landscape.

Below, in the mouth of the pass, another kind of silence held sway. It was the silence of Roman discipline. Cassius and the twelve men of the Fire Cohort advanced, not with a chaotic charge, but with the slow, inexorable rhythm of a glacier. They moved in the testudo formation, a walking fortress of overlapping shields, their Ignis Steel blades sheathed, their faces grim and focused. The only sounds were the soft crunch of their hobnailed sandals on the gravel and their own steady, controlled breathing. They were a wall of iron and will, advancing on a wall of shadow and glass.

Alex stood further back, flanked by the remaining ten of Maximus's scouts, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He was a commander, an emperor, but in this moment, he was also a spectator to a terrifying experiment of his own design. He watched his super-soldiers, their bodies now coursing with the fiery energy of the Aeterna Ignis, and felt a profound sense of both awe and dread.

The Unfallen guards did not move. They simply waited, their long, spear-like weapons held at a perfect, uniform angle. They watched the Roman shield wall advance, seemingly unimpressed, their inhuman stillness a potent psychological weapon. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Then, from the canyon rims high above, the sky broke. The first volley of arrows, loosed by Maximus's hidden archers, hissed down from the heavens. It was not a chaotic rain, but a disciplined, concentrated fusillade aimed with deadly precision. The silent ambush had been met with a silent ambush of its own.

The effect was shocking. Some arrows sparked and shattered harmlessly against the strange, smooth armor, just as Lyra had predicted. But others, aimed with a lifetime of practice, found their marks. An arrow punched through the unarmored joint at an enemy's elbow. Another found the sliver of exposed neck just below a mask. Two of the Unfallen guards crumpled to the ground without a sound, their movements still eerily fluid and graceful even as life, or whatever passed for it, fled their strange forms.

The remaining three reacted with a speed that was simply not human. There was no shout of alarm, no break in formation. They did not even glance at their fallen comrades. In perfect, silent unison, they lowered their 'glass' weapons and charged.

From the Roman line came a single, guttural roar from Cassius. "IGNIS!"

The testudo exploded outwards. The Fire Cohort, unleashed at last, met the charge head-on. The collision was a sickening crunch of two impossible forces meeting, a clash of Roman iron and alien technology.

Alex watched, his breath catching in his throat. The scene unfolded in a series of brutal, visceral snapshots. Gisco, the giant guardsman who had so recently been a trembling addict, now moved like a vengeful god. An Unfallen guard lunged at him with its spear. Gisco didn't just parry the blow; he shattered the weapon's black, glassy shaft with a powerful sweep of his Ignis Steel gladius. Before the enemy could recover from the shock, Gisco drove his heavy, iron-bossed shield forward, a battering ram of pure, unnatural strength, and crushed the Unfallen's masked face. The obsidian-like armor, which had seemed so invincible, cracked and splintered like pottery, and the creature went down hard.

Another guardsman, his face a mask of ecstatic fury, engaged a second Unfallen, his superior strength allowing him to batter aside its defenses. He drove his sword into a gap in its torso armor, the Ignis Steel blade grating as it punched through the strange composite material. The Unfallen stumbled, but it did not seem to feel pain. It simply... stopped functioning, slumping to the ground like a deactivated automaton.

But the Unfallen were not just brittle statues. They were incredibly fast and lethally precise. Their movements were economical, efficient, and utterly without flourish. One of them, facing a wild, two-handed swing from a Cohort member named Varro, did not bother to block. It simply sidestepped the clumsy attack with a dancer's grace and thrust its own weapon forward.

The monomolecularly sharp tip of the 'glass' spear sliced through the air. Alex watched in horror as it met Varro's torso. It didn't clang against his chainmail or punch through his leather tunic. It passed through them as if they weren't there. Mail, leather, flesh, and bone offered no resistance. Varro's berserker rage vanished from his face, replaced by a look of profound, bewildered surprise. He looked down to see the black, glassy shaft protruding from his own stomach, a geyser of crimson blood pumping out around it. He fell to his knees, his gladius clattering to the ground, his life spilling out onto the rocky floor of the canyon. The Fire Cohort had taken its first casualty.

The sight of their comrade falling drove the remaining guardsmen into a new level of fury. They abandoned all pretense of disciplined fighting and became a whirlwind of pure, destructive rage. They descended on the last Unfallen guard, the one that had killed Varro. Its speed was no match for the sheer, overwhelming force of a dozen demigods. Its weapon was shattered. Its limbs were broken. It was battered to the ground, a twitching, broken thing of shadow and glass.

Cassius, his own face grim and splattered with something that looked more like black dust than blood, stood over the fallen enemy. He raised his gladius to deliver the killing blow, but Alex's voice, sharp and commanding, cut through the air.

"NO! I want it alive! Disable it!"

The centurion, his battle-lust still burning hot, hesitated for only a fraction of a second before his discipline reasserted itself. He reversed his sword and brought the flat of the heavy Ignis Steel blade down with crushing force on the creature's legs, shattering its knee and ankle joints with two sickening cracks. The creature went limp, immobilized.

The battle was over. It had lasted less than a minute. The silence that descended was profound, broken only by the ragged, desperate, gasping breaths of the Fire Cohort as the first, dizzying effects of the Aeterna Ignis began to wear off. They stood amidst the wreckage, their chests heaving, their eyes wide and wild. They had been victorious. They had faced an unknown, terrifying enemy and had utterly destroyed them. But the price was lying in a pool of his own blood a few feet away.

The captured Unfallen guard, twitching on the ground, began to make a sound. It wasn't a groan of pain or a cry for mercy. It was a low, electronic hum, a sound that seemed to come from deep within its chest, and it was steadily rising in pitch and intensity.

Alex, his mind flashing back to every sci-fi movie he had ever seen, felt a surge of pure, ice-cold terror. "It's a self-destruct!" he screamed, his voice raw with panic. "GET BACK!"