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I wasn’t surprised by the sound of fighting. Considering the huge commotion I had triggered, far bigger than I had expected — or thought to be possible, considering the existence of another stage beyond Sorcerer came to me as a very unpleasant surprise — and it would be a fool’s dream to expect the ship to avoid the attention of the Roman fleet. 

I didn’t make a move, and waited passively instead. 

I was surrounded by the isolation wards, but since they were geared to keep what was inside hidden, my enhanced senses — both hearing and mana-sensing — were enough to give me an accurate assessment of what had been going on. 

The shouts of the attackers were enough to reveal the identity of the attackers. The shouts about daring to fight against Republic were an obvious clue, and I had tangled with the legions enough to recognize their battle commands. 

Compared to their aggressive shouts and threats, the ship crew worked in an eerie silence, even as spell after the spell had been launched. 

And they demolished the attacking legions, which was rather shocking. 

A part of the defeat was certainly about the incompetency of the legions when fighting in the sea. The Republic always treated the navy as an afterthought, which meant that while every legion had years of campaigning experience on land, the same efficiency didn’t apply to the sea — which resulted in the Republic relying on the client states for the bulk of the sea-faring activity. 

However, that didn’t mean that the legions were incompetent at sea, it was just relative incompetency compared to the deadly war machine it represented on land. They were still capable of dealing with most threats. 

Unfortunately for them, the crew of the ship could hardly be counted as the most threat. 

The extraordinary nature of the ship was evident from the secret hold I managed to discover, with an arsenal impressive enough to be treated as a declaration of war after sending that to the sea under the Republic’s control, well above even a smaller country should have been able to access. 

While the content of their secret compartment implied a certain amount of military competence, their display still managed to surprise me. 

A part of that shock was about the amount of magic they had been throwing around. The flare of energy, originating from the captain and marking him as a sorcerer didn’t surprise me much, but the same didn’t apply to the number of mages that were a part of the crew. 

Almost one in every three sailors was casting spells, which meant that, even without relying on the ballistas on the hold, the ship was able to punch well above the expected weight. Though, the density of magic talent wasn’t as shocking as the coordination they had been displaying, every spell they used mixing with each other with a level of skill I could never replicate. 

Though, it was more about the way I trained, designed to act solo rather than as a team. Clearly, the crew of the ship chose to go to the other extreme end. 

It was not a bad idea, provided one was confident enough to raise dozens of mages, only to equip them to work only in teams. Even Roman Legions lacked that level of coordination, as it was accepted that such overspecialization would hurt the flexibility of the legions — not to mention the prohibitively expensive nature of raising replacements, only for them to wait to replenish the specific losses in the formation. 

“Who the hell Theodora managed to arrange this ship,” I murmured as I continued sensing the battle. I had a likely answer in mind, of course, but I needed evidence to confirm that. 

Luckily, I had all the time I needed to do so. 

Meanwhile, the crew managed to demolish the attacking legionaries in barely more than a minute, and killed the last man. 

I didn’t have much experience with seafaring, but even I knew that capturing an enemy ship was, as always, one of the biggest sources of money, as it was easily more expensive than any cargo it carried. And even if the winner didn’t have enough sailors to actually manage the ship, they would spend hours scouring the ship to make sure even the smallest hint of silver or valuable cargo was not missed. 

Yet, the moment they had managed to kill the last enemy, the sailors cast another combined spell, and sank the ship. 

Of course, from a logical perspective, their actions made perfect sense. They had just murdered a great number of Roman legionaries, and Rome had destroyed whole cities for less serious crimes. 

Yet, if there was one thing I learned in my life, that greed was an irrational emotion. Facing the loss of such great riches, I expected at least some of the sailors to argue despite the coordination they had displayed earlier. 

Feeling their magic as they sank the ship without the slightest hesitation and argument was just another piece in their mystery, showing that they served an organization that didn’t particularly care about earning back the great amount of treasure they had invested in its development. 

There were only a few entities in the world that could spend riches in that magnitude without financial expectations — to the point they could just let a military ship sink without even bothering to check its cargo hold — and none of those was the kind a trading company could interact, no matter the money the trading company possessed. 

However, ultimately, Theadora was not a trader, and I could think of one organization that was enthusiastic about discovering her whereabouts after her escape. 

“I wonder if she knows her trusted agents are working for her uncle,” I murmured. I didn’t even bother considering the possibility that she had tried to sell me out, and it was not just about the trust I felt toward her.

Currently, I might be the most wanted man in Rome, but that was a glorious title I had acquired barely minutes before I had stepped into the ship. At the time of arrangement, I was simply not worthy of mobilizing a force of this quality. 

Which left one obvious direction about the source of this mysterious elite force. 

The Eastern Roman Empire. 

“I need to find a way to inform her about that,” I murmured. I had my own problems, of course, but ultimately, there were very few people I actually cared about in this world, and despite the little time we had spent together, Theodora managed to occupy one of those spots. 

Pity that sending a message back to Rome wasn’t as simple as it had been when we arranged our communication system. I would be surprised if any of the dead-drop locations we agreed upon for discrete communication actually survived the chaos. 

I would have complained about that, but it would have been a tad unfair, considering the source of the chaos… 

“Hopefully they would not target her directly immediately,” I murmured. The chaos was intense enough that any plan they had made to target her would have been inevitably shelved. 

And, I had trusted Theodora’s capabilities enough for her to stay safe, especially since I had factored in her residence as I created the chaos, giving her the necessary time to react. 

Of course, now that it was obvious that her location had been discovered, any reprieve that she would have would only be temporary. I was tempted to try returning, but considering the forces I had managed to anger, I doubted that my return would help her. 

It was much more likely that any such attempt would make her situation even worse. 

Yet, I had to pull myself out of that thoughts, and instead, concealed myself carefully behind the rack I had pulled for that exact purpose, hoping that it would be enough for me to stay concealed. 

Not that I feared their discovery, at least in terms of the direct threat. Despite the interference of the wards, I had got a good sense of their capabilities. They were amazing… 

Just not good enough to actually defeat me while I had the Spear. And the fact that I was on their ship made their situation just worse. I was on their ship, and my core was filled with boundless energy. 

 Even after the mediation, I wasn’t confident in my ability to cast anything delicate, but one primal blast of electricity was not out of question, targeting the ship itself. By destroying the ship, their formation would turn useless. 

Unfortunately, defeating them was hardly my biggest problem, not when I had just made a mortal enemy out of the strongest family of the Republic. 

I didn’t have the luxury of alerting them to my presence. 

So, as a few sailors burst downstairs, I lowered my body over Xia’s, hoping that they would miss the decorative changes in the storage room doing their absence…