At that moment, outside the fortress.
A burly, hairless man with dark bronze skin and a vicious, imposing appearance sat atop a pitch-black war elephant. He stood over three meters tall, and the magnificent golden kilt armor and ornaments adorning his body only made him appear all the more noble and extraordinary.
As he watched the solid Roman defenses being forcibly smashed open by the Magecraft corps and the elephant herd, and saw the enemy ranks already descending into chaos, the brawny commander's eyes flickered. Moved, he raised a hand toward the black-clad formation before him, those grim and silent soldiers in black armor and masks, and signaled them to advance.
"Your Majesty, why trouble your personal guard? We have more than enough warriors willing to serve as your vanguard and seize the city for you!"
The older general Memnon urged his horse forward, struck his right fist against his chest, and earnestly requested permission to lead the assault.
"There is no need. The Romans' determination to defend the city has not yet been completely broken. The quality of our ordinary soldiers is far inferior to those well-trained Roman legions. Throwing them into fierce street fighting would only cause enormous casualties. In that case, it is better to let my personal guard completely shatter the last of their hopes."
Darius III, the Persian king commanding the army, looked down at the general he trusted so deeply and patiently explained himself, gently refusing the veteran's request.
Memnon moved his lips as though he wished to argue, but in the end he only sighed to himself.
There was no such thing as a war without death. To care too much about the survival of every individual soldier would only weaken a commander's grasp of the larger battle.
After decades at his side, the old general understood his king well enough.
Though Darius was broad and powerfully built, fierce in appearance, and famed as a warrior, at heart he was not truly a man suited for conflict.
As a ruler, he was fair and compassionate, deeply sincere and loyal toward those who supported him, a benevolent fatherly sovereign with a strong sense of duty.
But as a military commander, he was too easily stirred and too easily discouraged, overly vulnerable to emotion. Toward both enemies and his own men, he was too soft-hearted and merciful.
Those were fatal flaws.
For instance, Memnon had never been fully in favor of deploying the Immortals into the city ahead of time to reduce the pressure of breaking the fortress. It was an aggressive move, and a risky one.
The Immortals were one of the few truly elite forces Persia could field. They steadied the army's morale and shaped the momentum of battle. They were, in effect, the spine of the Persian army.
Now, simply to reduce so-called casualties, most of them were being scattered into brutal street fighting against the defending Romans. It was a waste of their value, one that needlessly increased the instability of the larger force outside the city and might even place their side in danger.
After all, no one understood the true quality of ordinary Persian soldiers better than an old commander who had spent his life among the ranks.
They depended too heavily on the Immortals and on divine power. In both fighting spirit and battlefield skill, they lagged behind the Roman legions.
That was exactly why the Persian Empire, despite possessing tens of thousands of elite Immortals and a large corps of Magi, could only fight Rome to a stalemate.
Too few elite troops. Too many mediocre ones.
Persia could hardly conquer and rule the entire Roman Empire with just a few tens of thousands of Immortals.
Still, the decision had already been made, and the order had already been given. To force a change in plans at the last moment would only breed confusion.
Besides, though His Majesty's early use of the Immortals and the armored war elephants had been somewhat rash, the Roman fortress had already been broken and their side held a clear advantage. A small flaw in the final cleanup would hardly matter.
Woooo!
Just as the old general was beginning to relax, a bleak, mournful horn blast suddenly rang out.
Vast sheets of eerie blood-red light shot skyward, staining the heavens a brutal scarlet. The twisting clouds gathered and transformed into the image of a giant clad in armor and wielding a spear, roaring furiously toward the battlefield below.
In that instant, the Roman soldiers inside the fortress, driven to the brink and trapped in despair, felt their blood surge at those thunderous roars.
The war horn! The roar of the War God!
Mars above! We're saved! We're saved!
Reinforcements! Reinforcements have arrived!
The Roman soldiers, worn down like trapped beasts, their will and strength nearly exhausted, were suddenly overwhelmed with joy. Their rekindled battle spirit blazed through them like the strongest wine. It was as though a fire had been lit inside their chests, filling them with the urge to charge forward at once, to fight the enemy to the bitter end, to spill every last drop of blood and die dragging the foe down with them.
At that moment, even the most cowardly man was swept up by surging courage and turned into a warrior who no longer feared death.
Bang! Bang bang!
Bang! Bang bang!
Bang! Bang bang!
Even more terrifying was the rhythmic pounding of shields echoing everywhere. From the narrow streets, from behind broken walls, from inside houses, from beneath the battlements.
Roman soldiers fighting across the city either shouted as they gathered together or answered by striking their shields and weapons.
Small sounds gathered like streams, and in an instant they merged into a roaring wave like a surging river.
The Roman soldiers who had been driven into retreat, cut apart and surrounded, suddenly launched a savage counterattack.
When their javelins ran out, they stabbed with swords.
When their swords snapped, they smashed with shields.
And when even their shields shattered, they fought with their bare hands. They threw stones. They bit with their teeth.
Their eyes were bloodshot as these Roman soldiers erupted with a fighting spirit like iron itself. Like bloodthirsty beasts released from their cages, they would not stop until the last drop of blood had been spilled.
Even the Immortals inside the city, who fought like tireless killing machines, could not help but be shaken by such opponents. Their advance slowed, as if a massive beast had stepped into a swamp and could no longer pull free.
Boom boom boom boom!
"Woooo… Woooo!"
At the same time, the rhythm of the horns suddenly changed.
The sound rolled across the battlefield. The earth began to tremble.
A cloud of dust rose from a low hill several hundred meters away. A crimson tide poured down the slope like a raging flood, sweeping across the wasteland and crashing toward the central camp of the Persian army outside the city.
Not good! Roman reinforcements!
Old General Memnon's face changed dramatically. He stared in disbelief at the approaching Roman legions, at least thirty to fifty thousand strong, his eyes filled with shock.
Even before the Three Kings joined forces to carry out their plan to slay the Divine Ancestor, secret orders had already been issued to the army to prepare for border reinforcements.
So the moment Romulus fell, the massive Persian host of one hundred thousand troops had already reached the frontier. They captured city after city until their advance was finally halted by the fortress defended by the main force of the Tenth Legion.
Yet even so, the City of Seven Hills, which should have descended into chaos, had stabilized the situation within only seven or eight days. Not only that, it had mobilized forty to fifty thousand troops and rushed them here at an astonishing marching speed.
Even more unbelievable was that they had managed to approach to within less than a kilometer of the Persian army without being discovered.
How was that even possible?
General Memnon's mind buzzed with confusion, but there was no time to think.
The immediate priority was to stop the Roman reinforcements before they crashed into the army.
Buzz!
At that moment, as the Roman legions launched their assault, a spine-chilling chant of divine incantations echoed across the battlefield.
The sky suddenly filled with one crimson Magecraft array after another.
Thousands of spell projectiles rained down like a storm, exploding across the Persian flank that had just begun to organize a defense, blasting soldiers and mounts into the air and throwing the formation into complete chaos.