For the Glory of Rome: Chronicles of an Isekai'd Legion
B2 Chapter 27: Ides of March

The first few levels of a common skill were usually fairly easy to get. All one had to do was use it a bit, maybe improve one’s form according to what the skill suggested if one was feeling particularly ambitious. Easy.

Which was why Marcus suspected he’d be coming home to quite a few levels in [Running] after all this.

He put one foot in front of the other, panting with exertion as he ran on and on. His pace was faster than one might expect due to his admittedly impressive dexterity stat. But it was somewhat counteracted by his abysmal constitution. The combination meant that he ended up alternating between sprinting his heart out and resting for a few minutes at a time.

Thankfully, he was covering more distance and requiring less rest each time. His gait was beginning to feel more fluid as if he were a bounding gazelle in a field.

He frowned internally at the comparison. The image brought to mind a good deal of grace, but also the implication of being pursued by predators—a far less enviable circumstance. Perhaps a cheetah would be more apt, as the one doing the chasing? Although he wasn’t quite sure that he exuded the kind of aura a predator would, even if the speed was accurate…

Marcus continued to search for the proper figure of speech and refine his prose in an attempt to ignore the sweat pouring down his face. He refocused on his breathing, internalizing the way the skill made the air move in and out of his lungs in a careful rhythm. Before long, he spotted the tail end of a column of soldiers.

He powered up the last hill with renewed vigor. He’d managed to gain considerable ground on the auxiliaries, who were only a half mile away from him as they reached the battlefield. Marcus was able to reach the back ranks of the archers right as they formed up. A few men turned to him with questioning looks, but once they recognized the bard they simply shrugged and left him alone.

The men readied their bows and began to advance. Their movements were less mechanical and coordinated than those of the Legion itself. Still, given how little time they’d had to train, he found himself rather impressed by the display. Apparently the Romans knew what they were doing when it came to raising up new recruits. Even the men without combat classes carried themselves like soldiers.

Marcus watched, keeping back and out of the way as he gulped in lungfuls of air. After the day he’d had, his legs wanted to simply give out beneath him. But he forced himself to stay upright. After all the effort he’d spent getting here, he couldn’t simply allow himself to collapse now. He needed to see the battle unfold.

The group crested the hill with the bard on their heels. He peered out over the battlefield below, ready to see a scene from legend. Two massive armies facing off with banners flying, their forces shifting about in a cat-and-mouse dance as generals directed them in inexplicable movements that no one but a true master of battle could explain. Or perhaps it would be more similar to a series of duels between powerful individuals arrayed across the valley. Either way, he prepared himself for valiant charges and heroic defeats aplenty.

That was not exactly what he got.

Thousands of Legionnaires stood in ranks behind their shields and other constructed defenses. That, at least, was no surprise. But there was no opposing army. Only a few scattered adventurers.

Marcus watched as a magelike girl flew through the air, peppering the forces below with bolts of fire and ice even as she dodged and weaved around a constant flurry of throwing spears. Elsewhere along the line, a mass of Legionnaires churned about a single armored figure like the eye of a raging storm. Yet another group of soldiers swarmed about another point further away from the line, but what exactly they were converging on was impossible for Marcus to make out.

The sight was… strange, to say the least. Honestly, it was a little astonishing how many of the Legion’s forces could be successfully brought to bear against so few individuals. But even with that in mind, the scene was nothing like the grand battles he had imagined.

“Archers ready!”

At the shouted orders, the archers stirred into action. They took aim, their bows canted upwards at nearly identical angles.

“Draw!”

The sound of bowstrings going taut filled the air.

“Fire!”

The men loosed their arrows as one, filling the air with a dark cloud. The orders came again and again, resulting in four volleys being fired in quick succession. The first went a bit long, arcing over the mage’s head as she darted away. The next three, though, were right on target.

The mage waved a hand and hurled up a purple shield to ward off the barrage. Hundreds of arrows broke and skittered against the translucent wall as she continued to dodge through the air. But even from this distance Marcus could see her trembling with exertion. It wasn’t hard to guess that she was running low on mana.

The mage girl abruptly switched tactics, diving toward the ground at an angle to escape the barrage. But arrows weren’t the only thing she had to look out for. A fresh volley of spears arced toward her from behind as the Legionnaires smelled blood in the water, pinning her between twin waves of deadly projectiles.

Her flight path became erratic as she tried to dodge and block simultaneously. The purple glow of her shield sparked and fizzled as it began to crack beneath the onslaught. Below, the Legionnaires that weren’t hurling spears remained behind their shields, errant arrows clattering off their surfaces as if they were no more than sticks being thrown by a petulant child.

Finally, the mage couldn’t manage any longer. Her shield, which had gradually shrunk to reduce its mana expenditure, finally shattered. She twirled her staff about her body and deflected a few more spears, taking an arrow to the knee and hip in the process. Another one narrowly missed her head as she jerked herself out of the way.

It was through a combination of high stats and an inordinate amount of luck that the caster was able to avoid a lethal blow for this long. But the next volley of arrows saw her luck give out. Countless shafts pierced her through and made the mage resemble a pincushion as she fell out of the sky.

Marcus looked on in horror. At this point, he had seen his fair share of fighting from the Legion. He’d even seen them kill. But this… something about it disturbed him. The brutal efficiency with which they dispatched the mage… it was harrowing.

Worse still was the sheer simplicity of it. A mage that couldn’t have been below level twenty, a prodigy who had learned a coveted flight spell and could even maintain multiple spells simultaneously, and how had she fallen? To sheer, overwhelming numbers and persistence.

Marcus shuddered at the implications. Perhaps his words to Eleonora had been more accurate than he’d realized. The Legion could threaten Novara in a way that rivaled even the orcs of the west. Unless someone managed to pull together a lot of strong fighters and coordinate them, there may be little to stop them, especially as they continued to grow in strength.

The disturbing scene wasn’t the only thing on Marcus’s mind, though. He was also faced with the issue of how to possibly include this in his epic. All the best stories had one hero standing against an army alone or leading a charge against impossible odds. But this? This was the exact opposite. The Legion fought as one unified mass who singled out that lone hero standing on a hill, his sword held high. Their style was to overwhelm like a and take every advantage they could get. Even their low levels didn’t do enough to offset the strange inversion of the archetype.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

This wasn’t the makings of some glorious ballad. This was...

He wasn’t sure what it was.

***

Tiberius stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His eyes continued to sweep the battlefield and survey it for new developments while his ears focused on the plan being formulated among his officers. It was uncertain whether their idea would work. But then, no one had managed to put forth a better option.

Someone cleared his throat. Tiberius’s gaze flicked away from the battle to find an aide at his shoulder, his fist quickly moving into a salute. “Legatus,” the man murmured. “We’ve confirmed that the [Elemental Mage] has been eliminated.”

Tiberius nodded. “Good. Have the auxiliaries reposition to cut off any escape for the warrior.”

“Sir.”

The Legatus nodded toward the fighting. “Is there any word on the [Rogue] ’s whereabouts?”

The man shook his head. “No, sir. The scouts believe that she fled the battlefield altogether.”

“I see. You are dismissed.”

The man rushed away. He now had confirmation of both the mage’s and archer’s deaths. Between those two and the healer’s quick end, that meant there were only two more adventurers to take care of—or one, if his scouts were correct in their assessment.

Tiberius turned back to the conversation between his officers. It had paused at some point during the aide’s report, and the men looked at him expectantly.

“Sir,” one tribune began as it became clear that Tiberius’ attention was back on the topic. “Permission to continue with Secundinus’s plan?”

Tiberius quickly rewound the conversation in his head—something he had found himself capable of quite recently. It was one of those passive abilities granted to those with increased intelligence stats. Even though he hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation, he’d heard it and could recall the words with impressive clarity. He nodded.

“I agree that it’s our best option. But have the men continue the strategy of avoidance until everything is prepared. No need to engage him directly yet. His allies are gone, so we can afford to position ourselves well before moving in. But remember that every minute we delay is another minute where our men are sustaining injuries. See to it.”

The men nodded in agreement, and Tiberius turned away, his mind already working on the next problem. He trusted his officers to disseminate the necessary orders to the proper people. Allowing them to do so was also an important learning opportunity for them. Now that the situation had become a little less dire, he saw no reason not to give them a bit more freedom. Although they couldn’t fully relax yet.

Just as he turned, Tiberius felt a searing spike of pain blossom from his side. He instinctively spun, his fist lashing out against the unseen foe. His gauntlet smashed against the cheekbone of a blonde-haired woman wearing tight black clothing and wielding a bloodied dagger in one hand.

Though he’d never seen her up close, he recognized her from her presence on the battlefield. This was the [Rogue] that had supposedly fled.

The woman stumbled back, spitting blood through reddened teeth. Her eyes were wild as she stared down Tiberius with more hatred than he’d ever seen concentrated in a single person. How she’d gotten this close without any of them noticing was a mystery he had no time to ponder. Not when she was lunging toward him again.

Tiberius stumbled backward, his hand clasping the puncture in his side. Warm blood oozed through his fingers as his guard darted in front of him and closed ranks around the woman. Her blade skittered off their shields, and she screamed, producing another from her belt. Her hand blurred as the knife spun through the air, sliding between the tightening gaps in the wall and right toward Tiberius’s head.

He reached his free hand up in an attempt to block the incoming projectile. It sliced through an exposed portion of his arm, the fresh fire making him grit his teeth. But the impact deflected the blade just enough that it collided with the side of his helmet rather than his exposed face. The impact rang in his ears and sent him sprawling, his vision going blurry.

Tiberius lay on the rough-cut planks of the observation tower, stunned. It was all he could do to keep pressure on his wound as his vision began to go dark. He attempted to gasp in a breath, but it felt as though Hannibal’s elephant had a foot on his chest.

Suddenly, strength flowed into him. Tiberius gasped as the darkness began to recede. He looked around for the telltale flash of blinding white in hopes that they had finally leveled up. But that hope was dashed against the rocks as he realized what the actual source of this sudden vigor was.

It wasn’t from a level up. It was from the death of his men.

The would-be assassin lashed out with a seemingly endless flurry of blades, each strike calculated to inflict a lethal wound. Already, four men lay on the ground lifeless, their lifeblood having spilled across the floor even more quickly than Tiberius’s own.

The Legatus rolled onto his side with a silent grunt of effort, pushing himself to one knee. He grabbed the railing of the tower to pull himself mostly to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that more Legionnaires had noticed the commotion and were quickly rushing to his defense. Swords and shields were drawn, but up here there was little room to maneuver. It made it difficult to form a proper defensive formation and even harder to dodge the woman’s lightning-quick strikes.

Tiberius could see a solution. But it wasn’t one he was exactly happy about.

With a roar, his old bones launched themselves toward the blonde [Rogue]. His blade slid from its sheath as [Swordsmastery] activated. That skill that he’d picked up on a whimflooded him with an intuitive understanding of his own movements, allowing him to parry a blow meant for a young tribune barely old enough to grow a beard. The enemy’s head whipped toward him with a snarl and immediately focused her attention on the Legatus.

It only took a single parry for Tiberius to realize he wasn’t going to win this fight. Despite the infusion of strength from the deaths of his men, [Swordsmastery] ’s aid, and the assistance of his remaining men, it was all he could do to barely deflect the single danger swipe. The woman fought like a rabid wolf, and neither his age nor his injuries would helping him. He would be dead before reinforcements reached him.

Tiberius set his jaw and made a decision. If he was going to die, he would at least take the woman down with him.

He flung himself forward as the [Rogue] as she overextended with a wild stab. His shoulder caught her off-guard and square in the chest, slamming her into the railing of the observation tower. The wood splintered with the force of Tiberius’s charge and ultimately gave way. In a moment, he found himself surrounded by nothing but air as the pair began to plummet to the earth. He pinned the astonished woman’s arms to her sides to keep her from stabbing him again or getting away.

As they fell, Tiberius’s thoughts finally caught up with him. What was he doing? This wasn’t his role. He was supposed to leave the fighting to the guards and other Legionnaires. That’s what any other Legatus or Emperor would have done. His specialization was in oversight and command, not direct battle. Besides, he was far, far too old for this.

Those thoughts were hurled from his mind as the ground rushed up to meet them. Tiberius heard a sickening crunch as his shoulder collapsed, his collarbone and upper arm shattering like twigs as he drove into the woman’s body. He felt her sternum crack beneath him, her eyes going wide. Blood burbled from her lips as she coughed violently.

Tiberius steeled himself, holding fast to the last vestiges of his consciousness as pain racked his body. As the pair lay on the ground in a tangled heap of broken bones, he heard the woman wheeze.

“Mer… ethe…”

The last gasp of air escaped her lungs as she went limp. Tiberius allowed himself just a brief moment of relief as he lay there with more broken bones than he’d ever had in his life. She was dead. The threat was gone.

His vision went hazy as blood seeped into the earth below, both his and hers. He struggled to once again put pressure on his side, only to realize his arm wasn’t responding. A glance toward it revealed points of shiny white bone protruding from skin. He decided that he didn’t particularly need to investigate further. Not when he couldn’t do anything about it.

He let out a pained chuckle as rapid footfalls hurried toward him, the sound oddly muffled in his ears. Of all the ways for him to go, this was not one that he expected. Then again, maybe he should have seen this coming. Assassinations of emperors weren’t so uncommon, after all.

At least he’d accomplished his aim. If he did fall here, then hopefully Gaius would be able to lead the Legion to victory in his stead.

Just as he closed his eyes, a blinding light filled his vision.