Fate: I Just Want to Die and Sit on the Throne of Heroes-Chapter 85: Father of Rome

Chapter 85: Father of Rome
In the end, reality proved that Athena’s foresight still fell short of Rowe’s.
Calling his own wisdom “beyond the world” might sound arrogant, but he truly had once held the ultimate secrets of this world in his hands.
The Goddess of Wisdom was indeed clever.
But she did not understand one thing.
Many problems did not require delicate calculations or elaborate schemes. Sometimes, finding the flaw in another’s design and exploiting it was enough to achieve twice the result with half the effort.
After all, gods were nothing more than the embodiment of concepts.
They were the tendrils of the world.
If one could grasp an older “mystery” that overlapped with a similar concept, then, by extension, one could become an older concept in that domain, the main trunk from which those tendrils branched.
A position higher than the gods themselves.
Even if that concept was only borrowed.
Even if that dominance was temporary.
It was still enough to suppress them.
Enough to control them, if only for a brief time.
“You bastard… damn you, damn you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”
Even under Rowe’s control, Ares still raged, eyes bloodshot, voice hoarse with fury.
Rowe’s brows pinched together slightly.
By using Athena’s blessing as an entry point and seizing the “concept” contained within it, he had temporarily taken hold of Ares and could now perceive the god’s existence from the inside.
Yet what he sensed was only the tall man before him.
He did not feel, as he had expected, the presence of a mechanical body that had descended from beyond the heavens.
Ares was only a god now.
He was no longer a part of the interstellar fleet that had once fallen from the stars to the surface.
That fact left Rowe both disappointed and puzzled.
The disappointment was simple: if the Ares before him was only this much, then he was not as overwhelmingly powerful as Rowe had hoped.
The confusion was directed at the Greek pantheon.
Why was Zeus still in that mechanical state, yet Ares was not? The Athena he had met earlier had also shown no mechanical traits.
Rowe had no intention of hiding his doubts. He spoke as soon as the thought formed.
“Mech, is it? So you know about that much.”
Though under another’s will, Ares did not question the words. A legendary sage was supposed to possess knowledge far beyond ordinary understanding. That he knew these things was not strange at all.
“After that battle back then, aside from Zeus, who else could maintain that form?”
Thousands of years ago, perhaps tens of thousands, when the Star Hunter descended, Zeus, God-King of Olympus, had united the Twelve Olympian Gods and their power to resist it.
He lost.
But he was not destroyed.
After that defeat, only Zeus, the strongest, could continue to control his mechanical body. The others had their divine machines scattered and lost within the Imaginary Number Space.
This was hardly a secret.
Any beings who had lived since that era generally knew at least fragments of it.
“So that’s how it is.”
Rowe nodded to himself. His earlier questions finally fell into place.
Regardless, the Ares before him was still one of the chief gods. His power was more than enough to break Rowe’s defenses and kill him.
“Then let’s continue.”
“Continue… what?”
Ares froze.
The answer came a heartbeat later, as his hands rose on their own, spear and shield crossing once more, his massive frame coiling with renewed tension.
“Continue the fight, of course.”
Rowe smiled and manipulated Ares, God of War, like a puppet.
“The battle isn’t decided yet.”
At that moment, he released Athena’s blessing, stripping away her constraint and raising the Sword of Rupture once more.
“You damned… are you mocking the great Ares!?”
Ares’ fury redoubled.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it!”
He struggled violently against the invisible bonds, but Rowe had no intention of letting him escape.
To ensure the result followed the script in his mind, he could not allow a single deviation.
“You are Ares, God of War.” Rowe’s voice remained calm. “If the God of War does not fight, what else is he good for?”
“Use everything you have. Kill me. Only then can you break through the wall that bars you from Victory.”
He did not only control Ares’ body.
He controlled his heart.
He inflamed the authority of the God of War.
“Victory, Victory, Victory.”
That was Athena’s domain, the authority Ares had coveted yet never obtained.
He had fought all his life and rarely won.
His eyes reddened further.
Rowe’s body carried the mystery of “Victory.” Even a twisted form of being “without Victory” still contained the essence of that concept.
That was exactly what Ares desired.
Only by killing this man could he seize it.
Boom.
The sixteen hooves of the four divine horses pounded into the earth, shaking the ground as a fresh wave of crimson light burst forth like blood.
“Ares, Ares, Ares!”
The Spartans roared his name once again.
“Athena, Athena, Athena!”
The Athenians, wrapped in the coils of the three serpent goddesses, shouted in response.
To their eyes, the battle between Rowe and Ares had never stopped.
The war between Athens and Sparta still raged on.
None of them could see that Ares was already moving by Rowe’s will.
“What exactly is he planning?”
Athena’s figure finally appeared.
The goddess with flowing silver hair stood on a distant ridge, her white gown stirring in the wind, crimson eyes clouded with solemn doubt.
At that same moment, Ares bent his knees and leapt from the chariot.
Spear in hand, he descended like a falling mountain, like the sky itself crashing down, bringing his full weight and wrath to bear on Rowe.
Rowe raised the Sword of Rupture.
Crimson clashed against crimson.
The wilderness, already torn and cratered, cracked further as the sky itself seemed to sway.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s Ares. How could he be so enraged?”
“That fool.”
“Lord Apollo, should we stop him?”
“It’s too late.”
“That one is a chief god. Once he stops holding back, unless Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades move personally, no one can withstand him from the front…”
The gods of the sky, the gods of the underworld, and all the other divinities turned their attention toward the distant battlefield.
In the cave of Mount Pelion, Chiron opened his eyes slightly and looked off into the horizon. Starlight stirred in their depths, like ripples across a night sky.
“The Sage? Ares? Why are those two fighting?”
“What is that sound?”
Heracles, climbing high along a rugged mountain path in search of Prometheus, the Titan said to have stolen fire for mankind, halted mid-step as the distant roar reached him.
Countless gazes converged.
The light of all the gods washed down upon that single point.
Life and death stood side by side.
“Come, Ares!”
Rowe invoked the Sword of Rupture. The three cylindrical segments symbolizing heaven, earth, and man spun violently, dragging into motion the primordial rotational force that split all things.
A storm of impact and defense tore outward.
Layer upon layer of crimson pressure crashed against Ares.
The god’s armor splintered.
His skin fractured.
His divine flesh split open as golden blood spilled out.
“Break, break, break for this great one!”
The spear in Ares’ hands thrust forward again.
For one instant, the storm parted.
The spear pressed straight through the raging currents.
With a crisp sound, like something cutting through glass, the tip of the spear stopped just before Rowe’s face.
Sharp and dazzling.
Crimson and drenched in blood.
Rowe smiled.
He closed his eyes and waited for death.
Ares had already been driven into a critical state, grievously wounded and only a step away from falling. One more push, and Rowe would die.
And Ares might fall with him.
That much was enough.
To seriously wound a god at the cost of his own life.
Or to perish together with him.
Either outcome would be enough to step onto the throne.
For Rowe, the former was safer than the latter.
If he accidentally killed Ares outright and survived alone, then this carefully constructed death would be meaningless.
So he had to keep the God of War alive.
Dying to injure him was far easier to control than trying to engineer mutual annihilation.
Yet, at that decisive moment, Ares suddenly let out a wild roar.
He released the spear.
It fell, striking the ground with a metallic clang.
The crimson storm dissipated.
This war…
“I’ve won, and I’ve lost.”
The madness and bloodlust in Ares’ eyes faded.
Rowe blinked and opened his eyes.
He immediately realized he could no longer control Ares.
Because the one standing before him was no longer merely “Ares.”
“So this is war?”
Ares coughed up a mouthful of blood, but there was pure joy on his face.
“Oh Sage who does not fear death… can war possess justice as well?”
The old Ares had never believed that.
He loved war.
In his understanding, the meaning of war was nothing but killing and death.
As one of the mechanical weapons of an interstellar fleet that had descended from beyond the heavens, his role in the past had always been simple: sweep the ground clean and exterminate all life.
He had never needed to ask what war meant.
Now he understood.
Because Rowe had closed his eyes.
Because of that final restraint, that deliberate opening for death.
Rowe had tried to end the war with his own life.
In Greece, war had never held any justice.
It had always been a game board for gods, a series of wagers with mortals as pieces.
Yet Rowe, with actions rather than words, had shown him what “benevolence and righteousness” were.
The benevolence and righteousness of refusing to kill.
The justice of ending war by sacrificing oneself for others.
Even to the point of facing death with open arms, determined to inflict a mortal wound on a god or die together with him.
That was a feat worthy of the word “great.”
“From the moment you joined the battlefield, not a single person has died.”
“This war of benevolence and righteousness that you have fought…”
“I, Ares, understand it now.”
Brilliant ripples spread from Ares’ body.
A pure, dazzling radiance burst forth, clear and stainless.
It was fighting spirit, refined and purified of slaughter.
As Ares, God of War, he had never been able to grasp the authority of Victory. That fate would not change.
But now, from Rowe, he had gained something else.
Benevolence.
Righteousness.
Justice.
And through that, he saw Rowe’s future.
Just as the Sun God of Mesopotamia had once done.
“I am Ares, God of War.”
He spoke loudly, voice echoing across the battlefield.
In that instant, he grasped many things and saw far beyond Greece.
He saw the future, the dissolution and fading of the Greek world.
He saw outsiders building a new, magnificent nation that would inherit Greece’s legacy.
He saw a figure who would, in the name of a god, set this spear upon a sacred hill and name that new nation “Rome.”
And the god presiding over Rome would be him.
“From now on, I shall be Mars as well, God of War of Rome, god of righteous war.”
Bathed in the sacred light, Ares looked directly at Rowe.
“Because of you, I have awakened.”
“I shall honor you as the Father of War, the Ancestor of Rome.”
“What I proclaim, mankind shall obey.”
“Wherever your footsteps reach, every unjust war shall end at that very moment.”
“They shall cease to exist.”
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