Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

The blade's song ended as suddenly as it began.

One moment Julius was an unchained tempest — steel blurring, the world dissolving into blood and screams — and the next, it was as though the earth itself pressed down on his shoulders.

His knees nearly buckled.

The fire that had filled his veins guttered out, leaving him with nothing but the leaden weight of his body and the unbearable silence that followed slaughter.

[Heroic Ascension Ended]

[Power Level: Restored to 75]

The system text faded from his vision, but its meaning hung heavier than any wound.

The Heavenly Demon Rain sagged in his grip, no longer alive, no longer eager.

Just steel again.

Julius stabbed it into the mud to steady himself.

The battlefield stank of iron and smoke and burning flesh.

For the first time since he'd come to this world — not on the night of his summoning, not even in the bloodied wars against Visigoth, Greecia, or Ramie — Julius felt bile rise in his throat.

The rain turned the ground to a mire of red.

Men's faces stared up at him, some twisted in agony, some in confusion, some in nothing at all.

Boys hardly old enough to shave, their hands still clutching broken spears as if death hadn't convinced them they'd already lost.

Julius ripped his helm free and vomited.

The acid burned his throat, hot against the chill of the rain.

Behind him, his legions surged past, disciplined lines finishing what his rampage had begun.

The Praetorians roared their Emperor's name as they pressed forward, their shields locking, their pila flashing in arcs of cold precision.

Julius stayed rooted in the mud, breath heaving, chest heavy as though his ribs had been filled with stone.

He had seen battlefields before.

He had waded through corpses, had been drenched in the spray of enemies too close to dodge.

He had cut, and cut, and cut, until cutting was the only language he knew.

But not like this.

The relic had made him more than human, and in that thirty minutes, he had become less than one.

A reaper without thought or restraint.

No strategy, no mercy — just slaughter.

It was one thing to kill an enemy standing before him.

Another to see the heaps of broken men who might never have had a chance.

He had been told, once, that true strength was not in the arm but in the will to use it.

Looking now, Julius wondered if strength was just another word for butchery.

"Lord Emperor."

Sabellus's voice broke through the haze.

His old friend's armor was dented, his cloak torn, but his eyes were steady.

"The center is broken. The Francian host is scattering. Within the hour the camp is ours."

Julius didn't answer immediately.

He stared at the heaps of dead instead, the way the rain turned every pool of blood into a spreading pink stain that drowned faces and names alike.

"They died screaming,"

Julius muttered.

"As they should,"

Sabellus said, firm but not unkind.

"They chose to resist you. Better they fall here than plague our borders for years to come."

Julius closed his eyes.

He wanted to believe that.

Needed to believe that.

And yet his stomach clenched again, the taste of bile sour in his mouth.

He still couldnt get over just how many live he had reaped by his own hand in that 30 minute span of this battle

He hadn't dared admit it before, not even to himself — but each time he drew on its thirty minutes of borrowed divinity, the aftermath grew worse.

Not in a physical sense, but more of a mental one, as if even as strong as the system could make him, this blade alone was there to humble him proving that even as strong as he could make himself with its help, the system could always do better.

"Get the men to secure the camp,"

Julius rasped.

"I'll… join you shortly."

Sabellus hesitated, but bowed and left him with the corpses, not wanting to countermand his emperors orders, but made sure to post a guard detail to protect the 'exhausted' man.

Julius sank down onto a broken shield half-buried in the mud.

The cold seeped through him, though whether it was the rain or the guilt he couldn't say.

How many more?

This was one battle, one day, against one kingdom.

Ahead lay others.

Germania might bend the knee now, but rebellions always simmered below the surface of control.

The Achae had only been broken, not erased.

Aeygyptus stirred in the east, to form a mighty union to stand against great powers.

And the Visigoths loomed larger than any foe yet with powers he was fully aware of from his days when this was all just a game.

Each name meant tens of thousands more like the boys whose eyes stared at him now.

Each conquest meant another field like this.

Another sea of faces turned to mud.

To bring peace — true peace, the kind that could last longer than a generation — how much blood would be required?

Would the rivers run red until he drowned the world itself?

The thought gnawed at him.

Once, he had believed war was the path to order, just as the game had depicted.

That unity could only be forged in the fire of battle.

Now, kneeling in the rain, Julius feared unity was only another word for conquest, for tyranny in the field of battle.

A soldier stumbled past him, dragging a wounded comrade.

Both were Romanus.

Both saluted their Emperor even as blood dripped from their armor.

Their eyes were filled not with fear, but pride.

Julius returned the salute weakly.

The men still believed in him.

Believed he carried their hopes, their future, their children's future.

That weight was heavier than the relic's power.

He pressed his palms to his face, feeling the grit of blood and mud grind into his skin.

He was tired.

Not just in his body, but in his soul.

And yet he knew he would not stop.

He could not.

Because if he faltered, if he let the burden fall, there would be no one to carry it.

The world would fracture again, as it always had, and this carnage would multiply a hundredfold.

Perhaps he was the butcher history required.

Perhaps he was the monster that peace demanded.

Julius stood at last, wiping rain from his eyes.

The nausea was still there, the bile still at the back of his throat. But he forced himself upright.

The Francians still fought in scattered knots across the camp.

His legions pressed them hard, the clash of steel and the screams of the dying rising like the storm itself.

He picked up the Heavenly Demon Rain, its black steel dulled now, silent.

A weapon.

No more, no less.

Julius sheathed it.

Tomorrow he would slay again.

Tomorrow he would don the mask once more and lead his men through fire and ruin.

Tomorrow he would tell himself it was for peace.

But tonight — tonight he could not escape the truth.

He was not the Emperor of Unity, nor the Hero of his people.

He was the reaper.

And the world was his harvest.